The Strange Ship
by regularmother
Summary: In a hunt for raw materials for their people, Quarian explorers open a new mass relay. What awaits them on the other side is nothing they could have ever expected. Pre-Mass Effect 1, Post-Halo 4; AU only where necessary to mash two universes together and create something resembling a coherent storyline.
1. The Strange Ship

**Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram  
** _ **QCS Shiram**_ **,** Hylactor-class Frigate  
 **Council Calendar: Day 12, Year 2657**

Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram sat pensively at her chair, leaning forward as though she was ready to jump out.

"Sensors are clear, captain," her sensor officer chirped back.

"Good," replied Yuhi, "Navigation, bring us in range of the relay." She leaned back a bit, a weight lifted off of her shoulders. The Citadel Council had made it illegal to open mass relays to unknown territories and the offense was punishable by penalties such as life imprisonment or death by Turian patrol group, but her people needed new mining grounds to sustain the massive migrant fleet. If she died here, it would be another necessary sacrifice for a people who had sacrificed nearly everything already.

The Quarian Conclave Ship Shiram was an angular vessel shaped like a hawk. Towards the back, two wings angled away from the top and front of the ship held additional thrusters and edge mass effect field generators giving the Shiram fantastic maneuvering capability, at least compared to ships of the era. Moving forward, its blocky bow tapered slightly with a single barrel surrounded by almost a full two centimeters of heavy, starship-grade armor at the front for protection.

The Shiram was found scuttled in a Terminus system under its original Turian military name, "The Furious Fist," too heavily damaged for a council race's use but a perfectly salvageable and workable vessel for a Quarian.

The Shiram's military-grade fusion/antiproton engines began to light up, first a dim blue, and then a warm violet as the 205 meter-long vessel accelerated towards the 15 kilometer long tuning fork-shaped mass relay. Onboard the frigate, the gentle warble of the engines and din of the reactor filled the deathly silent cockpit with noise, each person onboard understanding the gravity of the situation.

The mass relays are a system of faster-than-light gates scattered across the galaxy bridging vast distances in the blink of an eye. Built 50,000 years ago by the enigmatic and long since extinct Prothean Empire, each is 15 kilometers long, has an upper and lower spine, and in the center are concentric rings orbiting a massive core of element zero. Normally, the core glows blue, but when a relay has not yet been activated, it gives off no light.

Yuhi's frigate slowed down in front of the relay. The captain tensed up before she gave the order. "Activate the relay. Let's see what's on the other side."

"Roger that, captain. Sending commands." The silence in the bridge was deafening as the rings of the relay began to spin up. Moments later, the navigation officer spoke up. "Relay is active. We're clear to go through."

Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram took a deep breath before giving her orders. "This is it. There's no turning back. If we're lucky, we find new resources for the Migrant fleet to maintain ships. If we're unlucky, we find another genocidal race of insectoids. Take us to combat status. Hunn'Vuras," she turned to the pilot below and to her left, "take us in."

The rings of the relay began orbiting faster and faster as the core began glowing a brighter and brighter blue. The Shiram drifted next to it before being flung into the void.

In a system thousands of light years away, the Shiram was spit out of another, identical mass relay surrounded by debris in a different system.

"Drift is 4 kilometers. We're here, captain."

"Good job Hunn. Liru, what do we see?"

Liru'Fusal vas Shiram was the sensor officer. She studied Astrogeology at a university on Palaven, graduated near the top of her class, and returned to the migrant fleet with a sizable amount of element zero in a cargo hull for her pilgrimage gift. "Central star is a white dwarf. The relay itself appears to have been encased in an asteroid but activating it cleared it out. Nothing but a massive asteroid belt and a gas giant further out. The sensors don't have the resolving power to figure out the composition of the aster-wait, I'm picking up a strange reading on the outside of the system."

"What is it?" asked Hunn as he read the minds of everyone onboard.

"I-I don't know." Liru's worried stuttering only further built up the tension in the room. "It's big and it appears to be metal. Some kind of station? There's some debris near it, also of the same material. I can't say for sure without getting closer to it. Whatever it is, it's definitely alien."

The officers on the bridge turned to the captain. "Alright, let's check it out. Hunn, plot an FTL jump to a point 20k away. I want the barriers, reactor, and engines to full power. Keep the main cannon powered off. We may need to get out of here very quickly."

* * *

Thirty minutes later, in the observation deck, the crew convened their next course of action. On the display. a huge, gray series of smaller hexagonal prisms, each one smaller than the previous, hung eerily in the foreground, with the thousands of stars of the Milky Way providing the background. The largest of these hexagonal prisms faced the Shiram with multiple cylinders protruding slightly from the prism itself. Breaking up the prisms were blocky and angular shapes, each as large as the Shiram itself.

The captain sat upright at the ship's dining table with most of her crew in attendance. "Alright, let's go over everything we know. This ship," she pointed to the holographic display, "is unlike any we have ever seen before. It's over 1.5km in length, making it as large as the Xedorn, our dreadnought, but our eezo sensors put it at over 80 percent greater mass. Our sensor officer thinks it's from a massive amount of this armor, more than 3 meters thick in places," Yuhi continued amidst a few gasps of disbelief, "which we calculated from the massive tears in the ship and our gravitic sensors. Probably battle damage. We suspect this is some kind of super dreadnought. We have detected no element zero onboard, but it's giving off a small amount of latent heat, suggesting the reactor is still on. Engines, or at least what we think are the engines," she pointed to the cylinders on the aft of the ship, "are off, though. They appear to be purely fusion-based, like modern civilian craft. It doesn't look like anybody is left." Even under Yuhi's mask, it was clear her face radiated only business as she turned to Liru, the sensor officer. "Did I forget anything?"

"No sir," the sensor officer practically wilted under the view of the entire crew's stare.

"Good." The captain turned to the display, admiring the strange vessel for a moment. It looked heavily damaged but still radiated fortitude and majesty. Whoever built this thing built it to last. "We're going to be taking a look around that ship, first from the outside, and then from the inside. Our mission is twofold. Firstly, if there are any survivors, make first contact before the council gets a chance. Secondly, if there are no survivors, capture the ship for study. It goes without saying that this is an extremely dangerous mission and as such, I'm asking for volunteers to join me."

* * *

The old _Actina_ -class shuttle launched from the shuttle bay of the Shiram with a half-dozen marines, the captain, and two translucent sensor drones hovering in mid-air. Other than the focused marine trying avoid to pieces of errant debris, everyone was staring out of the window at the target. From their approach, two squat, massive cylinders and four much smaller, similarly built cylinders dominated a large, flat portion of the ship, likely the aft.

"Those are the engines," the captain pointed out.

"How slow do you think it is?" the marine leader asked rhetorically, "I mean, if these are just fusion drives, and the ship is that heavy, it must be built for defense, right?"

All across the port side of the ship, smooth, blackened tears in the armor presented themselves, almost as if the gray metal had flowed off of its original location and straight up burned in others. The aft of the ship, in particular, had sustained what appeared to be structural damage from massive amounts of heat and concussive force. What had to have once been meant to be flat was now slightly wavy.

As the shuttle moved over the top of the strange ship, melted metal gave way to a shattered observation deck and dozens of what appeared to be small weapons.

"Point defense? Maybe for missiles?" asked a marine.

"Probably," said another.

As the shuttle moved towards the front, the large, hexagonal superstructure gave way to more complex, geometric shapes as the hull tapered to a smaller hexagon up front. Angular structures, likely to deflect enemy weapons, made the entire ship appear almost like a very high-tech cone. The front of the ship was dominated by two barrels of enormous size, the muzzle almost as large as the shuttle. The entire crew stared at the things in silence.

"Let's check out the starboard side."

"Yes, captain," the pilot responded, his tension obvious. The maneuverable shuttle pulled a hard left turn and moved to the other side, the side not visible from the Shiram.

"That must be their race's symbol," someone pointed out.

"It looks like a bird. Maybe they'll look like the turians, but hopefully friendlier," said another.

"A ship like this doesn't exactly scream friendly," the captain reprimanded her crew. "Stay sharp. Stay focused."

A chorus of "Yes sirs" echoed through the small team.

"Though I bet that's the name," she leaned over the back of the pilot's seat and pointed to the strange glyphs. The letters UNSC EVEREST dominated their views and, through the sensor drones, the view of everyone watching onboard the Shiram. "It probably had the same text on the other side but damage to the outer hull removed it. I wonder what it says?"

* * *

 **Author's note:**

I've read a few Halo/ME crossover fics and either they didn't do it for me, they were seemingly abandoned, or they really lacked in space battles. I'm trying my hand at my own, especially since I have so much time to kill in planes, trains, and automobiles. I've rated this M since I expect to someday write some depraved thing involving ONI, the STG, and/or the flood.

On a related note, I have a degree in Physics and work as an Artificial Intelligence Researcher so I promise that when I come up with something that sounds like magic, I'll cite it with an academic paper. Additionally, if you have any questions about how something worked in a chapter, I'll do my best to respond with something educational.

Let me know what you think of the story (or don't; it's your choice, really). This is my first time releasing anything I've written so constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Additionally, if you're interested in being a proof-reader/beta-reader/editor, feel free to let me know. I have a number of stories in backlog.


	2. The Everest

**Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram  
** _ **QCS Shiram-A**_ **,** Actina-class Shuttle  
 **Council Calendar: Day 12, Year 2657**

In the inky void of space, a small shuttlecraft of Turian make piloted by Quarian explorers attempted to dock with the hulking corpse of an alien spaceship. The shuttle pilot looked down at his glowing interface with a steely glare, hands moving across it with a rigid purpose. "Docking clamp engaging in 3, 2," he said with a tinge of worry as a thump reverberated through the diminutive craft. "We're docked. Computer says the seal is good." The pilot, a young Quarian, looked back up at his captain standing behind him and searched for validation.

Yuhi knew her people. "Good job, Joto. Alright everyone, grab your weapons." The captain bent over the console, right hand grasping an M-3 Predator pistol and forearm leaning on the copilot's chair. "Shiram, do you read?"

A pinch of static flooded out of a speaker before the signal was modulated correctly. "We read you, Yuhi. Receiving both audio and visual signal from the drones and audio from your helmets. May the ancestors guide you."

"And to you. We'll see you all on the Shiram in a bit," responded the captain before turning off the shuttle's communications system. "Joto, you stay here and operate one of the sensor drones remotely. Be ready to leave quickly if we need you to. Everyone else, let's go exploring."

Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram put her pistol into her thigh holster, walked to the center of the shuttle to the docking bay, and descended down a tube towards an octagonal door. Next to it, a pad was showing giving off a green light. Yuhi pressed it. A moment later, the door slid open from her left and right. She went inside, gesturing to her team to follow her. Five heavily armed Quarian marines and a floating holographic ball followed her in. As they entered the hallway, white lights awaking from their slumber flickered on the ceiling.

The room was made of the strange, gray metal as the outside of the ship, but much more lustrous. Another door like the outside one barred her way. Yuhi pressed another button on the inside of the ship, shutting the 20 cm-thick outer door and pressurizing the room.

"This thing still has air pressure? And artificial gravity?" asked a marine.

"Yep." The captain looked down at her omni-tool as she read off her suit's analysis: "Pressure is 1.1 times Citadel Standard. 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, trace amounts of other gasses. Nothing fatal, other than possible bacteria. I didn't detect a decontamination scheme as we entered so be extra careful. You know how it is. Now let's move out." Yuhi moved towards the interior airlock door and it opened automatically.

Centuries of isolation onboard spaceships in space suits had rendered the already naturally poor quarian immune system into something nearly useless. A single suit tear could be fatal.

Inside, a wide hallway with defensive emplacements greeted them, all of which were empty. At the end of the hallway, another octagonal door stood, this time much larger, and giving off that same green light. Between the door and the Quarians, a stillness hung in the air, making Yuhi's ears stand up on end.

"On your guard, everyone," Mal'Rofal vas Shiram grunted as he raised his assault rifle. "Me, Feere, and Rel up front, the captain in the middle, everyone else in the back. I'll take point." Mal moved forward, rifle aimed, eyes peeled, and walking with a combat crouch. The rest of the crew followed.

As the next door opened, a holographic display flickered to life displaying a map. Rel was the first to vocalize his reaction. "Their display technology is much clearer than ours. The colors are more vibrant and the picture much clearer." He moved his hand a little closer to the display but an arc of electricity flew from it and right into his hand. His omni-tool flickered slightly as the marine pulled his hand back. "Ow!" He responded to the unspoken question before others had a chance to ask it. "I'm okay. Just static, I guess."

"Careful! But good catch." Rel turned to the captain and smiled at the praise as the captain continued, "we're not dealing with total primitives. This spot, here," Yuhi pointed to a red banner with the word BRIDGE on it, "looks important. Should be a twenty minute walk at most. Mal, since you volunteered, you have point."

A slight grin could be seen past his helmet's face mask as the bulky Quarian marine turned away from Yuhi and began down the labyrinthine hallway with his assault rifle raised. His two subordinates flanked his left and right with shotguns drawn followed by the rest of the boarding team.

Over the course of the next five minutes, they passed through various open doors and past various closed ones in this maze of a ship. "Hey, cap," Feere, the junior marine next to Mal spoke up, "does it seem like we're being funneled somewhere? Like we're being watched?" He moved his head towards the camera in the upper left corner at the end of yet another small hallway.

"As far as we can tell, the vessel is uninhabited." Yuhi hoped that her people couldn't hear just how unsure she was of herself at this point but keeping people focused meant keeping people alive. "Keep your eyes open, your weapons ready, and your focus on the mission."

As the six Quarians rounded the corner, past another automatically opening octagonal door with a glowing green center, they entered another short corridor with yet another door, glowing green. As soon as all of them entered, the door behind them automatically closed, just as all of the others have. Unlike the others, however, these doors changed from a green to a red in a moment.

"Shit! We're locked in!" Panic overtook the normally focused captain. "Shiram, do you hear me? This is Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram! I say, do you hear me?" After a brief moment with no response, Yuhi muttered a series of curse words before addressing the situation. "Alright, everyone, I want 3 people on each door, weapons drawn. Don't fire at anything or anyone unless they open fire first." The three marines on point went to the door the team was headed towards while the captain, the two marines guarding the back, and the sensor drone went back to face the door the team had come through. "We're in position," Yuhi told the other team.

"We're ready, too, captain" Mal responded.

After about 20 seconds of tense silence, Yuhi spoke up. "Hey, Feere," she turned to the marine on the side of the room as she holstered her assault rifle on her back, "give me your shotgun. I want to try something."

The marine turned and tossed the heavy, Batarian-made AT-12 Raider shotgun to the captain. "Everyone, get behind the corner. I want to see if we can get out of here without automatic doors." _The doors have been very thick. I wonder if these aliens expect a lot of boarding action,_ Yuhi added in her mind.

The two marines in Captain Yuhi's detachment ran behind a corner as the captain held the bulky shotgun's trigger in her right hand, barrel in her left, pointing at the door. "Firing in 3, 2, 1." The powerful weapon's brutal sound tore through the narrow hallway as small shards of metal flew through the air, hit the door, and dented the thick armor. The shrapnel-like chunks of metal from the shotgun then bounced back towards the captain, blocked by her now glowing mass effect-based kinetic barriers.

"Uh, clear." Yuhi muttered some additional choice words under her breath as she moved to inspect the damage. She looked at the silvery-gray metal door, its red light almosting taunting the captain for walking into a trap. "Keelah, that blast just dinged it."

Suddenly, a voice boomed through what had to be some kind of intercom. In perfect Quarian, it spoke with a commanding tone. "This is Vice Admiral Preston Cole of the United Nations Space Command and I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot my ship. Drop your weapons on the far side of the room, go back to the other side, and no harm will come to you or your ships."

The Quarians turned to look at each other and gripped their weapons a little tighter before Yuhi intervened. "We're lowering them, Admiral."

She and her crew did as they were instructed before the doors opened to a dozen bipedal aliens in pitch-black armor and dark-blue visors approaching with enormous guns drawn.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Before I ramble on, a special thank you to those who left reviews, particularly constructive ones. I don't know what the etiquette is for addressing questions and/or constructive criticism is on the site but the author's notes at the end seem as good a place as any.

A reviewer from the first chapter, " _The Strange Ship_ ," asked why the captain of the Shiram would lead a boarding party. It's a great question that others may have thought about.

I've always viewed the Quarians as being a very hands-on race. Firstly, there's only 17 million of them so delegation feels like a luxury reserved for the Admiralty Board. Secondly, the pilgrimage is a very hands-on, high-risk, life-formative event. Yuhi is like Captain Kirk or Commander Shepard in that she just tackles problems head on.

This could just be a culturally accepted norm regardless of how good of an idea it is. There's precedence for this in the game, too. Tali, one of the foremost spokespeople for the Quarians and probably the most famous Quarian in the galaxy, goes on an extremely dangerous mission to Rannoch in Mass Effect 2. Why not send someone else? Anyone else?

Maybe this is just a constant stone wall in Quarian society or mental disposition in general: a lack of recognition of the dangers of exploration or a higher than human-acceptable level of risk. Quarians did make a mildly murderous race of machines, after all.


	3. The Shiram

**Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson  
** _ **UNSC Everest,**_ Valiant-class Heavy Cruiser  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 2nd, 2561**

Jon Hammundsson, known as "Longship" to his late squadmates and simply "Gunny" to his fireteam, stood inside of a room holding Betsy, his MA5B assault rifle. There, the legendary Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole sat at an oak table with a glass of Macallan 120 year-old scotch in a crystalline glass. To Jon's right, on the other side of the door, stood Private Safa Amari, another ODST, and one of the few female ones, holding an M45E shotgun. On the other side of the table sat nothing other than a real, live alien that didn't want to exterminate the human race. Or at least not yet.

' _An alien I don't have to shoot sure is a pleasant change,'_ Jon thought to himself as he loosened his grip on Betsy, the very same rifle he received as a colonial militiaman on Harvest.

Betsy was well-worn. The gray, painted cerametallic exterior had numerous dents and dings, and the paint itself was nearly stripped bare turning it from a dull grey to a greyscale rainbow. A few modifications graced the rifle such as a longer barrel, an underslung grenade launcher to replace the flashlight, a different buttstock, and a heavier trigger spring to make the weapon into something that was distinctly his. Dozens of years of training and fighting the covenant had turned Jon into an artist of sorts. Betsy was his beloved brush, M118 7.62x51mm armor piercing ammunition was his paint, and his canvas was the myriad of aliens that desired nothing less than the wholesale extermination of humankind.

The alien sitting in front of Jon didn't look like one of the slavering, religious maniac variety of aliens that made up the whole of covenant-kind, but one could never know. According to the ship's AI, Tyr, it was a Quarian and it was she. There were a few outward differences between humans- lower legs bowed back, two fingers, a thumb, and two to three toes, but, other than that, this thing looked remarkably like a human female and their males looked remarkably by human males.

The suit she wore seemed pretty fancy to the farmer-turned-fighter. Her head was wrapped in a full mask with metal plates on either side of her head. Covering her mouth was some kind of circular piece of armor that glowed when she talked. To Jon, it looked like something straight out of a ridiculous 22nd century science fiction movie. A purple face mask covered the remainder of her face.

None of that mattered to the grizzled, xenophobic gunnery sergeant, of course. If that alien moved even so much as slightly incorrectly, both Jon and Private Amari would turn her innards into a Jackson Pollack painting across the back of the room with those heavy metal brushes of theirs.

Admiral Cole leaned back, savoring the taste of the scotch for a few quiet moments. "Mmm," he paused a moment, "you sure you don't want some? This is the finest that money can buy." He spoke in English and Tyr translated afterwards through the intercom of the room.

The Quarian language was a strange mixture of sharp consonants, few vowels, and generally very sharp. It reminded Jon of German or NuNordic. "I'm sorry, Admiral, but as I said, Quarians have very poor immune systems. We can't eat or drink anything that hasn't been properly sanitized," the quarian prisoner responded.

"That's a shame. This stuff," Cole moved the glass in a circle letting the amber liquid slosh around for a moment, "is the greatest thing humankind has ever created; worth dying for, at least. Anyway, Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram. That's your name, right?"

The alien captain moved back slightly. If quarians really did live in their suits all of their lives as her files claimed, it would make sense to Jon that their body language is very animated.

"Yes, it is. How did you get that information?" she asked.

"Captain, us humans believe strongly that trust is the cornerstone to a good relationship." The Admiral just completely ignored her question. "That's why I'm going to broadcast this conversation to your ship. Their responses will be broadcast back through the intercom. I know your suit has a communications system but we'll be blocking any communiques you send through it. In any case, your shipmates will know that you're okay. Is this acceptable for you?"

"Yes, thank you Admiral." Despite the differences of an unknown amount of distance, time, and natural evolution, the combination of relief and worry on the xeno's face was as clear as day to Jon.

In Jon's helmet, the Everest's AI piped the translated communications directly to him and presumably the other humans present in the room.

"Yuhi, can you hear me?" asked some alien.

"I can, Liru. Relax, I'm fine. The aliens have established communications with us and we're just conducting an interview," responded Yuhi.

"Thank the ancestors. What are your orders?"

"The aliens claim we'll be returned unharmed after this so just sit back, listen to the conversation, and stay on your guard. If something happens, return to the fleet."

"Understood, Captain. Stay safe. Shiram out."

Yuhi shifted in the chair slightly. "Thank you, Admiral Preston Cole vas Everest."

"Not a problem. Please, Preston is fine. Mind if I call you Yuhi?"

"Not at all."

Admiral Cole, still leaning comfortably back in his chair, smiled without baring his teeth. Smart- it could have been taken as a sign of aggression. "Fantastic. Now, let's begin."

* * *

 **Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson  
** _ **QCS Shiram-A,**_ Actina-class Shuttle  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 2nd, 2561**

The first contact chat went well. So well, in fact, that Jon sat on the first shuttle trip to the _Shiram_ along with three other ODSTs as part of a seven-man diplomatic attache- six ODSTs and the admiral himself. Jon would give the all-clear and then the admiral and three other ODSTs would board the next shuttle, along with the alien captain and two of her Quarian marines.

Jon sat in a utilitarian seat that made a UNSC pelican seem comfortable. He had his trusty MA5B slung across his back along with a M6D magnum on his thigh and an M45E shotgun in his arms. His two subordinates were similarly equipped expecting close quarter, ship combat. One of them had the M739 SAW light machine gun in place of a shotgun and assault rifle. Across from him sat various quarian marines with their strange folding guns tucked away.

One of them tried to break the ice. "So, you guys have a real AI in there?"

"Yes." _'No need to elaborate and give away possibly classified information,'_ Jon thought to himself.

"And it hasn't tried to kill you all yet?"

"No." Jon was about to say that Tyr was a he but held himself back. ' _Information is important and we have all of it._ ' The ODST gripped his shotgun a little more tightly.

The Quarian looked at Jon expectantly for some kind of elaboration but none came. He sat back in his chair before trying moving forward to continue the conversation. "So this Covenant, you fought them against them?"

"Yep."

"How long?"

Jon didn't move despite the painful memories. "Since first contact." His family escaped only to be glassed in the next battle at Green Hills. His colonial militia squadmates were almost all dead after various campaigns. At that point in Jon's life, it would have been easier to list off who hadn't died, and that before he was frozen in cryo for nearly twenty years.

"Yeah, but how long ago was that?"

' _This thing just doesn't shut up, does it? Cole did say to play nice...'_ Jon sighed and did some mental arithmetic."A few days away from my 36th anniversary if you count the time in cryo, which I don't."

The next few minutes of the flight were quiet before the pilot interrupted to say something in Quarian, then in English. "Docking in 30 seconds." The seconds ticked down before a heavy thump shook the entire ship. "Docking complete."

"You," Jon pointed to the nosy quarian across from him at the back of the ship, "help me move the food. Fireteam, move after the quarians. No aggressive moves." Jon shouldered his shotgun on his back using a magnetic holster and picked up one end of the crate with one hand. His other hand rested on his massive pistol. The quarian used both of his arms as they moved the crate out of the shuttle and into the receiving area of the quarian corvette.

The hangar bay was packed with empty beds, boxes, and things hanging from wherever things could hang from. The designs were all built to favor function over form and it looked like there wasn't a single piece of unnecessary material on any of the furniture. No paint adorned anything. Yet, in spite all of that, it all somehow looked dirty. ' _This place is a shithole,_ ' he thought to himself as he moved the crate with the help of the alien. "Nice place you've got here," he lied to the xeno next to him, "looks like a nice home." ' _I've seen glassed worlds that looked nicer than this,_ ' he added to himself. "Is this location fine?"

"There is fine," an unknown voice said. "I'm Hunn'Vuras vas Shiram, second in command of the ship. Pleasure to meet you, human." The quarian extended a hand which Jon didn't meet, instead preferring to keep his hand resting over the meaty pistol on his thigh. "Please, we mean you no harm."

"I've never met an alien that didn't want me dead and I'm not about to believe that's about to change." Jon used his surgically implanted neural link to turn off his external speakers and opened up a direct link to the _Everest_. "This is Shield Actual. Appears to be clear, other than the aliens themselves."

"Copy Shield Actual," the Everest's comm officer responded, "update us when the shuttle returns."

"Copy Everest." Jon switched back to his external speakers. "Everest has given all-clear to the shuttle, quarian pilot. Feel free to pick up everyone else."

The quarian acknowledged the command and left back through the airlock. The faded and stained door closed behind him with a tinny thump. Jon felt the small shuttle shake the fragile corvette as the airlock and clamp of the Shiram disengaged with its diminutive shuttle.

The ODST gently took his shotgun from the clamps at his sacrospinalis and gingerly, finger off of the trigger, hefted it up to resting position. His movement caused the fragmentation grenades on his chest to jingle. As he pulled his weapon, the quarians in the hangar bay moved back slightly. Noticing, the gunnery sergeant tried to ease the tension. "Just for comfort. I like the way it feels."

"Be careful, human," Hunn began, "we have ten of us for every one of you." The alien XO turned around and left to go work on some unspecified task, or maybe just observe.

Jon could read between those lines. He looked at his teammates, Private Amari with her shotgun and the massive albanian form of Corporal Alikaj holding his light machine gun. Their hands were tightly gripping their weapons. ' _Good,_ ' he thought, ' _can't be too careful._ '

Not three minutes later, a call came in from the Everest. "Shield actual, this is Everest. Pickup is here."

"Roger Everest." Jon looked around the hangar. The quarians were all nervous, of course, with the intimidating combat armor of the ODSTs and their massive guns, but nothing overtly risky. "Package is cleared for transport, over."

"Roger that, shield actual. Package is en-route, over." The comms went dead and everyone waited around for another four minutes.

Tension filled the air until the shuttle docked again. Jon didn't move his weapon an inch during that agonizingly long period. ' _If there's going to be another hostile first contact, it can be the fault of aliens, again,_ ' he thought, thinking back to the screams of his friend Osmo back on Harvest as an alien, a grunt, tore into the nape of his neck.

The doors opened to the sounds of chatter as Cole walked out wearing full ODST armor. He turned to Jon, palm facing downwards but arm out slightly, gesturing to the ODSTs to lower their weapons. "Holster those weapons, troopers. We're guests here."

Jon looked back. "Sir, our job is to keep you safe."

"Not every first contact must be Harvest."

"Yes sir," he said defiantly. Jon made sure a round was chambered in his shotgun and the safety was on before he clamped it onto his back. The other ODSTs in his team did the same.

The quarian captain of the frigate Jon stood in followed the human admiral, looked at the tensed ODSTs, and continued her conversation with the admiral as the two walked forwards through the hangar. "The turians are the military might of the citadel council," she explained as she walked. Jon followed but his attention listed elsewhere.

Past the presumably normally bustling hangar bay, dirty, gray panels with faded and chipped red accents lined the long, narrow hallway of the small ship. One or two of the panels were set down with bare wiring and patched piping exposed underneath, likely from recent repairs. Well-worn beds, rusty metal crates, and various personal items lined and filled every spare inch of free space, but there were no people inhabiting the space. The rooms themselves also had no doors, so it was unlikely that they were slavers, pirates, or anything like that.

The train of people stopped at a wide door. "This is the mess hall," Yuhi said, "I have a ship to run but my second in command will be down to answer any additional questions you may have." She turned around and disappeared past a corner as all of the humans and a handful of the quarian marines shuffled into the cramped room.

Jon sat down at one of the just so slightly uncomfortable chairs at the large table that dominated the mess hall as did everyone else. No one was saying anything and the admiral did say to try to break the ice. "So," the ODST began, "what do you guys do to kill time around here?"

"I'm guessing you've never heard of Skyllian Five?" Jon could almost hear the quarian marine grinning as he pulled a deck of hexagonal playing cards from one of the seemingly endless layers of pockets on his suit.

The seven hour trip to the quarian armada passed by without incident, mostly. During one of the games of Skyllian Five, the quarian crew discovered that humans also partook in alcohol. Corporal Alikaj survived the ordeal with a heavy stumble and a Quarian crewmember survived in the infirmary.

The third round of poker was an ongoing battle between a quarian marine, two quarian crew members on break, Private Amari, and Vice Admiral Preston Cole. Dozens had gathered to watch at this point, both quarian and human.

"Full-waelarm!" exclaimed one of the crew as she slammed her five cards down and began gesturing towards the hexagonal chips.

Without even a hint of expression or emotion, Preston Cole gently placed his five cards. "Zomo."

The room erupted in a cacophony of sound.

"Keelah," the unlucky quarian almost gasped for air, "what are the chances of that?"

Cole's brow furrowed for a few moments. "Around three percent," he responded.

Jon smiled before turning back to his conversation with the three quarians. "Where was I?"

"Your first contact?"

"Right, Harvest. Beautiful planet, back in '24. Plains of crops as far as the eye can see. My folks, my siblings, and I, we were simple farmers, you know. Standard crops- corn, okra, ambrosia, spinach, you name it. I had always wanted to be an explorer, though." Jon looked up wistfully, thinking of those better days. "Anyway, I joined the militia thinking I'd be able to join the marines with a good word from my commanding officer. Instead, we got attacked by aliens and I joined the best of the best," Jon explained as he pointed to his faded, chipped, and melted ODST emblem on his left shoulder pauldron.

"How was your family when you left for the battle that got you stuck here?"

"Dead. Us militiamen got 'em off planetside to this other colony called Green Hills. That was the next colony hit. Most of the survivors of Harvest got glassed there." The quarians didn't respond for a few moments until Jon let them off of the hook. "Relax, it happened a long time ago and plus, it's not like I've got a shortage of targets to vent my anger out on, you know?"

"What's does it mean to glass a planet?" asked another of the quarians.

"The covvies use these plasma weapons, both on the ships and on the ground. If a planet doesn't have anything that interests them, the covvies just use that plasma to turn the surface of the planet to literal glass." Jon noticed the shock spreading through the aliens' faces. "If it does, they land, crush us, take what they want, then turn it to glass. We make 'em pay for it, of course. Admiral Cole over there," Jon turned to the human admiral beginning to leverage his helmet's polarized visor while staring his poker opponents' faces, "has won more battles than any other human in history but that's still not enough."

"Keelah," the shock was evident in the bystander's voice as he joined the conversation.

"Every year, we only lose more worlds. By the time we accidentally left, the death toll was, like, a billion? Maybe one-point-five?" Jon hadn't actually ever summarized that kind of loss before. He never needed to- he just deployed on some nameless world, won or lost, usually lost, packed up his gear, and moved on to the next planet. "We started the war with, you know, over eight hundred fifty colonies. We were down to a shred over six hundred when the Everest vanished."

"Keelah se'lai, Jon vas Everest," said the bystander somberly.

"Sounds like what happened to us," opined another.

"Well the ancestors'-damned council probably won't help you," said the third crewmember.

"The council only helps themselves," agreed the first.

Hunn'Vuras, the second in command of the ship, squeezed through the crowd seconds later before announcing the ship's imminent arrival. "Arriving at the fleet in 5 minutes! Humans, Yuhi will be waiting for you in the observation deck. Mal," Hunn looked down at the quarian marine in the game, "would you mind escorting our guests?"

Not at all, sir." Mal'Rofal stood up. "Alright, follow me."

The crowd parted as the humans left the game and made their way towards the observation room. The well-lived and cozy hallways were indicative of not just a home, but of a race that refused to lay down and be taken by the forces of life. If Reach, or maybe even Earth, was lost, was this what was in store for humanity?

Mal kept walking but craned his neck around. "So, are all of you humans such lucky pyjacks or is that unique to just a few of you?"

Jon let out a chortle. "People don't survive decades of constant combat from skill alone."

"No they don't," Mal soberly responded as he turned a corner, walked down a set of stairs, and arrived at an open door. The humans followed him down. "Here we are: the observation deck. The Captain is waiting for you."

"Thanks." As the years of war kept dragging on, Cole had become ever more brusque.

Jon was all too familiar with strategies for coping with loss. For Jon, it was by becoming everyone's acquaintance but never a friend. For Cole, maybe it was by making a wall. Jon had led people to their deaths- Mendoza, Jangellion, Ming, to name just a few- but nothing close to the scale of Cole's command. How many men and women had he maneuvered right into their necessary deaths? A hundred thousand? A million? More?

"Admiral Cole vas Everest," Yuhi extended a hand which Cole matched, "please, have a seat; enjoy the view." Cole turned to Jon's squad and nodded. Jon followed the admiral's orders and fell back into a chair, admiring the quiet grandeur of space.

"I love this room. This here was a Quarian special, a place for people to relax. The whole bottom half of the ship was, actually." Yuhi sat down in a chair close to the Admiral's she had staked out before the human's arrival. "We retrofitted it not long after getting the Shiram. Most races measure their ships in meters, but we also have to measure ours in square meters.

"See that in the distance? That's the mass relay in person. No holographic projections " Yuhi pointed to the teardrop-shaped blob floating in space. "Behind that should be the fleet."

"What should I expect when we arrive? And why are you helping us?" the human admiral asked as he stared out of the window towards nothing in particular.

"When you arrive at the fleet, you can expect a short tour or diversion while I debrief the admiralty board. Afterwards, you'll plead your case for those raw materials to fix this 'slipspace drive' of yours.

"As to why? That's the easy part. The Quarian people are dying and the Citadel Council has condemned us to this fate. We're never going to get the resources for another agricultural ship or dreadnought. When one goes, so do the millions of Quarians that depend on it for food and shelter. I'm a captain; I've sat in the meetings and I've read the reports. Year after year, our population only decreases.

"The technology of the Everest, of humans, is our best hope. With your 'slipspace drive,' we could be free from the relays; we could make our own colonies away from the Citadel Council. With friendly AI, we could fight back against or maybe even negotiate with the Geth. With a home for our people, we could rebuild.

"Oh, and the word 'Admiral' translates to Quarian just fine. It'd be nice to have a friend in a high place, Admiral Cole vas Everest."

The admiral turned to the captain. "Hmm," he let out with his low voice, "here's to a long and fruitful relationship, then," as he raised an invisible glass of scotch to his host before looking back out into the depths of space.

"Yes, definitely," she smiled before looking back through the window herself. The Shiram ventured closer and closer to the relay as the rings in its center began spinning faster and faster. "They're beautiful things, these mass relays," Yuhi opined. The bright, blue glow of the relay's core filled the observatory, patterns from the rings sweeping across the room and its inhabitants as the ship inched ever closer to the monolithic construction.

The admiral nodded when all of a sudden, a jolt of what looked to be electricity arced over to the _Shiram_. The rings were spinning at a truly prodigious rate before they stopped, the stars bent backwards, and the Shiram was launched thousands of lightyears in the blink of an eye.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

I had been toying with having the interview be from Yuhi's perspective but ultimately chose against it for various reasons. Mostly, I wanted to get a human perspective in on an alien in the story but I didn't want to shift perspective mid-chapter.

Measurement-wise, I chose to stick with the human metric system throughout the stories. I could have come up with some complicated conversions for distance, volume, etc. but does that really add anything to the story? Rather than adding flavor, I felt as though something like that would make the story needlessly complex and difficult to ingest. If you have strong opinions in either direction, let me know.

Science-wise, quarians drink human liquor and vice-versa. Ignoring the fact that Mass Effect's chirality explanation doesn't actually matter in life for a number of reasons (such as physics preferring a certain DNA orientation; see Drieling and Gay's 2014 paper 'Chirally Sensitive Electron-Induced Molecular Breakup and the Vester-Ulbricht Hypothesis' for additional information), I don't believe that alcohol has DNA remnants inside of it besides the yeast and sugars? As long as any yeast inside of it was filtered out, I feel like cross-species alcohol should be a reasonable thing. My thought was that quarians would do such things anyway for cleanliness purposes. Still, I'm no expert on biology or chemistry. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on the subject can let me know how wrong I am.

Story format-wise, do readers prefer infrequent longer chapters or more frequent shorter ones? This is a chapter that I could have easily broken up into 2 or 3 sections with minimal issue but I'd prefer to hear everyone's thoughts before I go one way or the other.

Again, still looking for a proof-reader/beta-reader. Is there a place on the site where I could grab one's time? In the meantime, if you notice a grammatical error, let me know and I'll fix it.


	4. The Keelah Se'lai

**Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson  
** _ **QCS Shiram,**_ Hylactor-class Frigate  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 2nd, 2561**

The admiral nodded when all of a sudden, a jolt of what looked to be electricity arced over to the _Shiram_. The rings were spinning at a truly prodigious rate before they stopped, the stars bent backwards, and the _Shiram_ was launched thousands of lightyears in the blink of an eye.

A split second later, the universe bent back into shape.

The ODST next to Jon got up out of her seat and took a step or two forward, one hand on the transparent metal of the observation window. "Woah."

Through the window, a vast number of ships floated. There had to be thousands. Even at the distances of in-system travel, three stood out- each was a few kilometers in length and started with a massive, spinning ball. They were surrounded by others, both large and small, but those three dominated the scene.

Behind the ships, a nebula dominated the background. Filaments and tendrils of brightly colored gas were lit up by protostars underneath the dust as ripples of plasma wafted on the outer edges of the nebula's sheath. Pings of near-luminal energetic particles accelerated outwards by the plasma sheath hit the kinetic barriers of the ships in the system, lighting up the barriers and the ships underneath in a dim yet vibrant blue hue. As the barriers on the _Shiram_ flared up, light from the impacts danced in the observation room, illuminating everything from the hard gray floor to the pitch black surface of the ODST armor. It was, quite simply, one of the most beautiful things Jon had ever seen.

"Definitely the nicest place we've ever parked the fleet," Yuhi proudly stated. She turned her right forearm towards her face as an orange holograph appeared on it. Words of some unintelligible language danced upon the small screen before she moved her hand back into the armrest of the chair. "I predicted correctly- you'll be taken for a tour of the _Neema_ , our largest dreadnought, while I do a debrief with the admiralty board of the Migrant Fleet. Then, the admiralty board will meet with you to discuss your request.

"What you're asking for shouldn't be much of a problem. The technetium is a byproduct of some of our nuclear processes and selenium is frequently mined by our mining ships. The selenium is likely unprocessed- is that going to be an issue?"

"No," Cole responded, "we have refineries and fabrication plants onboard."

"Good." Yuhi smiled before turning back to the view in front of her.

"Hey, cap'," Jon leaned forward towards Yuhi and pointed, "what are those big ships with the spinning spheres up front?"

She rotated her chair before responding. "Those are the liveships. They produce the food for every living quarian."

"Damn," an ODST complimented as the quarian continued.

"We built them in space within a year of our expulsion from the homeworld. If the human race has truly been consigned to the same fate as us, I don't see a universe where we wouldn't lend our expertise in building more."

Jon stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the fleet, grenades jingling as he stepped. He looked back at Yuhi with a smug grin on his face. "Thanks, though there's a lot of covvie ass-kicking between then and now".

The _Shiram_ had come closer to its intended destination and the observation room afforded a better view of the fleet. Jon turned his attention to the wide variety of ships parked in solar orbit. Some ships, like the liveships and the ship the _Shiram_ was approaching, looked unbelievably fragile, with their beautiful loops, spheres, and intricate shapes. They were so completely unlike anything in human or Covenant space. And yet others were so similar to the familiar, bulbous and smooth shapes of covenant ships, yet on a vastly smaller scale. Others still were angular and aggressive-looking, like the _Shiram_.

As the _Shiram_ began its final approach to the _Neema_ , Yuhi got up from her chair. "Let's make our way to the airlock. We'll be docking shortly."

The group of humans followed the captain through the ever more familiar corridors of the diminutive ship and arrived at an unassuming door next to a status display giving off a dull, red light from its scratched-up, beveled edge. A handful of other quarians milled about nearby. A moment later, the ship jolted as a tinny thump came from behind the airlock and the light turned to a green.

"Onwards?" asked the captain rhetorically.

Preston Cole responded with a simple "mhmm" as the airlock door slid open and the party moved through. The metallic gangway gave way to the main entry of the considerably larger _QCS Neema._ Various quarians, some armed, some not visibly so, stood by in their brightly colored suits.

The entrance was grand, with a single level but the ceilings were tall, maybe five meters in height. The walls were a lustrous dark gray with delicate sculptures embedded in the walls themselves. The ship was clearly made in a time of peace and great prosperity, times which were long behind the Quarian people if the condition of their suits were anything to judge by.

Towards the front, a male quarian stepped forward. He wore the standard quarian silver bucket on his head atop a suit with a black and silver chest piece and red and white appendages. "Welcome," he said with an outstretched hand greeted the humans, "I'm Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Alarei, and on behalf of the Quarian people, welcome to the Migrant Fleet, Admiral Preston Cole vas Everest."

Vice Admiral Preston Cole stepped forward, met the quarian admiral's hand, and shook it before releasing. "Thank you, Admiral Rael Zorah vas Alarei. It's an honor to be here and to establish a peaceful first contact between our two people."

A drone, floating about in midair, snapped its lens. A picture of humanity's first peaceful contact for posterity.

"This is Captain Gator'Shaal vas Neema. He'll show you around. We'll debrief Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram and then hear your request. Is this acceptable for you, Admiral?"

"More than acceptable," Vice Admiral Cole responded, "your hospitality is very much appreciated."

The captain of the Neema gestured to the humans to follow him. A pack of quarian marines followed the visitors in suit. "Welcome to the _Neema_ , humans," the captain welcomed his new visitors.

"Thanks for having us," the Vice Admiral responded with as much warmth as his cold heart could muster.

One of the human soldiers, Private Amari, opened a private line to each other human. "Hey, check it out. The date rolled over a few minutes ago. Official first contact on the anniversary of first contact."

" _36 years since that fateful day,_ " Jon bitterly remembered to himself.

"Happy Harvest Day, Private," he replied dryly as he walked through the halls of the alien ship.

* * *

 **Gunnery Sergeant Jon Hammundsson  
** _ **QCS Neema**_ **,** Neema-class Dreadnought  
 **UNSC Military Calendar, February 3rd, 2561**

"Thank you for joining us, Vice Admiral Preston Cole," Rael'Zorah motioned to a series of chairs in a moderately lit, windowless room onboard the Neema.

"Thank you for having me, admirals," Cole responded. His contingent of bodyguards followed the human admiral and stood at ease behind him.

"So, let me introduce everyone," Rael'Zorah continued, "you've already met Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram. This is Admiral Faetor'Shahala vas Jenbay of Special Projects," he pointed to the female next to him, "Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema of the Heavy Fleet," he motioned to the larger than average quarian, "Admiral Waela'Tora vas Rayya if the Civilian Fleet," he pointed to a flickering and fuzzy near-monochromatic holograph of a quarian laying down, tubes coming out of her, "and Admiral Reene'Yaal vas Shenbay of the Patrol Fleet." Rael finished as he sat down. "Firstly, I'd like to extend a thank you for your peaceful handling of our intrusion aboard your ship. We know how important ships are to those that inhabit them, so we assure you that we meant no harm or offense."

Cole sat down in the chair offered while the other humans kept standing. "None taken, Admiral Rael'Zorah. It was just a friendly misunderstanding."

"Time is, unfortunately, of the essence so let's skip the formalities. Tell us about this Covenant you're fighting."

"The covenant," Cole paused for a moment to search for a succinct summary, "is a hegemonic empire of aliens with religious overtones. Similar to how this Geth of yours systematically waged a campaign of genocide against your people, the covenant are waging one against my people. What's this issue with limited time?"

Admiral Reene'Yaal of the Patrol Fleet crossed her arms and sat back a bit before speaking. "Turian patrols. What we did- open a relay- is considered one of the greatest crimes in Citadel space and the Turian Hierarchy has a history of being," she paused for a bit, "overzealous in their duties."

Cole furrowed his brows for a moment. "You're not a part of the Citadel Council. Their laws don't apply to you."

"If only that were the case," Reene responded, "but the Council believes that all of known space falls under their purview."

Cole let out a low rumble of a chuckle as he grinned slightly. "How presumptuous."

"The Covenant," Han'Gerrel vas Neema of the Heavy Fleet said as he steered the conversation back, "their weapons, and defenses."

"Weapons? Plasma and directed energy-based. From what Captain Yuhi has been telling me of these kinetic barriers, I suspect that your shielding design would be effective in stopping plasma torpedoes but not lasers. Offensively," Cole moved around in his seat slightly to find a comfortable seating position, "I can't say. I don't know enough about how your guns function other than they do. Defense-wise," Cole took a deep breath as he looked over the remaining members of the admiralty board, then steered his gaze back to Han'Gerrel, "energy shielding which protects against impacts regardless of speed followed by meters of armor, depth being ship-dependent, of course. Covenant ships are tough nuts to crack."

"Meters of armor?" Faetor'Shahala, Admiral of Special Projects gave Cole an incredulous look. "How large are these ships?"

"Depends. Their smaller combat vessels, the CRS-class, they're about three hundred fifty meters in length. Medium-sized vessels weigh in around one-point-two kilometers. The biggest ships we've seen are the CAS assault carriers and the CSO supercarriers, which are five point five and twenty nine kilometers in length, respectively."

"Keelah," responded Reene, eyes wide open.

Han leaned back and uttered a quiet "by the ancestors."

Cole seized the moment of shock. He leaned forward, right arm on the table. "Admirals," he began, "our people have much in common. Our people both travel the stars, we both discovered a hegemony of aliens, and we both created artificial intelligence. There are differences, of course. Our hegemony is trying to eradicate my people while our AI has helped keep us alive while both your AI and hegemony tried to eradicate your people. I understand your hesitation regarding humanity, our technology, and our war" he turned to face Jon before looking back, "but we come as a people in need. Besides humanity, only quarians have experienced the _unique_ experience of having its species be the subject of a near-total genocide. The Quarian people, more than any other in the galaxy, understand what humanity is facing right now. For the cost of a few tons of raw materials, I can help prevent the total destruction of my people. If humanity survives, then you'll have our eternal gratitude. If humanity has fallen, then we would ask to join the Quarian Migrant Fleet. It is as your people say, 'keelah se'lai.'"

"By the homeworld I hope to one day see," Jon's translator helpfully informed him.

"The cost isn't free, Admiral Cole vas Everest," Reene bit back with a harsh tone, "materials that we give away means another ship will have to be scrapped. It means more quarians won't be born. You're asking us to trade quarian lives for human lives."

"No, I'm asking you to trade human lives for quarian lives. If the Covenant reaches Citadel space, how many lives will be lost? How many quarians on pilgrimage will be glassed? Will your ancient warships and agricultural vessels stand up to the inexorable tide of the covenant war machine? If you're worried about a few tons of selenium, I have my doubts. Let humans fall on the sword so that quarians don't have to."

Admiral Reene'Yaal vas Shenbay leaned back and studied the human leader for a moment before nodding slightly. " _Acceptance? Maybe agreement,_ " wondered Jon.

"Admiral Cole," the holograph of Admiral Waela'Tora vas Rayya began stirring, "young quarians go on pilgrimage," she paused to breath deeply, the tubes going in and out of her suit moving up and down with her labored breaths, "and return with supplies for the fleet to keep going. If there is no humanity left to return to, what would your pilgrimage gift be?"

"If humanity has truly been exterminated, then there aren't enough of us onboard the Everest to continue the species. We just won't have enough genetic diversity. Our pilgrimage gift, in addition to one of the most powerful warships humanity has ever made, would be all of the technology at our disposal. Artificial Intelligence creation techniques, Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Drive, advanced material design, medical technology, literally everything we have. Our gift, should it come to it, would be the entire legacy of humankind. What's left of it, at least."

"If those are the conditions, I hope we never have to receive that gift," Waela replied with heavy breaths and a heavier tone. The other quarians in the room studied the humans for a moment as the magnitude of Cole's words sunk in.

"If I may, admirals," Yuhi broke the somber silence, "when we were on the Shiram, you had mentioned that your artificial intelligence hacked our omnitools to discover our language, in addition to the galactic codex. How?"

"You'll have to ask Tyr, the _Everest's_ AI. My best guess is that he interfaced with your tools when you touched something on the _Everest_. Our ship-borne artificial intelligences are designed for signals intelligence and information gathering."

"Interesting," Faetor'Shahala leaned forward, both elbows on the table, fingers interweaved, "you said he? Your AIs have genders and names?"

"Yes," Cole responded, "our AIs are formed from recently deceased humans by scanning their brains. They are then uploaded into an AI housing. That's a simplification, of course, but that's the gist of it. They retain human memories and knowledge accumulated in their human lives."

"Fascinating." Faetor's said with a low and drawn out tone, "And they've never rebelled?"

"Never."

Rael'Zorah studied the humans with an analytic gaze before looking down at his omni-tool. He pressed a few buttons on the orange holographic screen that emerged from his left forearm. The other admirals followed suit. "Vice Admiral Preston'Cole," Rael started, "we are prepared to grant your request in full with a two stipulations. We would like to establish a channel of official communication through your ship. Would you find Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram and a few bodyguards to be an acceptable ambassadorial attaché?"

"Very. Yuhi would have been my choice, as well." Cole turned towards Yuhi and nodded gently before looking back at the admiralty board.

"Excellent. The second is that we'd like to interview your AI. We'd like to determine what threat UNSC Artificial Intelligence poses to our fleet and to shore up our defenses against AI intrusion," finished Rael'Zorah.

"Yes," continued Faetor'Shahala vas Jenbay of Special Projects, "we'd like a small cybersecurity team, five people at most, to interview your artificial intelligence and the data breach. Maybe patch holes in our firewalls that we've overlooked.

"I assure you that our AIs pose no threat to you or your people," Cole struck a relaxed pose on his chair, forearms resting against the armrests and hands limp, "but you are welcome to do an investigation so long as it doesn't run afoul of UNSC confidential information."

"Excellent," Rael'Zorah stood up from his chair, "the Quarian people are at your disposal. Keelah se'lai, Vice Admiral Preston'Cole vas Everest."

* * *

 **Author's note:**

People have overwhelmingly voted for longer stories so longer they shall be. I've also turned off guest review moderation- my apologies to visitors who have had to wait for me to check a box.

From a discussion point, there were some great discussions on chirality and DNA in the review section for chapter 3. My education in biology was always pretty lacking. If yours is too, or even if it's just fine, I highly recommend for every reader to check it out! A special thanks for everyone who has made me just a little less ignorant of the world.

Now, I promised some science explanations way back in the opening chapter, " _The Strange Ship,_ " so let's get started.

When a massive star goes supernova, the outer layer of its body is pushed outwards in the form of plasma at a high percentage of the speed of light (think 99% of the speed of light) while the inside is compressed into a neutron star. Some nebulae, like the one we saw this chapter, are formed from the result of this explosion.

Now I don't believe this has been experimentally confirmed hence the wording, but we strongly hypothesize that as this sheath of plasma expands outwards, it picks up particles of atomic dust from the interstellar medium, accelerates them, and spits them out at some outrageously high fraction of the speed of light relative to itself (remember, light is the cosmic speed limit!). We suspect that this process, known as diffuse shock acceleration, forms the majority of what are called cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays are interesting because they are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe. A singular nucleus of something like iron, could have as much kinetic energy as a baseball launched from an major leaguer's hand! Experiments like ISS-CREAM are designed to do direct measurement on these cosmic rays (though such experiments are usually very rare because of costs). Wikipedia has a great article on the topic in general for those who are interested.

In the Mass Effect universe, kinetic barriers are designed to stop projectiles moving at high speeds but not low speeds, so the activation of the barriers makes a lot of sense. In the actual universe, particles at such high energy would be extremely dangerous to living tissue, electronics, etc due to their penetrative power. While I decided not to bother, it is possible to explicitly calculate just how effective the armor of a barrier-less quarian ship needs to be using the Bethe formula, an equation which can be used for calculating the stopping power of materials as it relates to fast-moving particles. If the armor wasn't good enough and the kinetic barriers were off, our story would end here, with everyone dying of radiation exposure and cancer. Our protagonists must surely be glad that I'm not George R. R. Martin, then.

Likewise, it's good thing that human ships have literal meters of fancy titanium to protect themselves from such things, though it's not clear if standing next to windows would be safe.

Again, still looking for a beta-reader/proofreader. Please PM me if you're interested.


	5. The Flight

**Ambassador Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram  
** _ **UNSC Everest**_ **,** Valiant-class Heavy Cruiser  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 3, 2561**

Ambassador Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram turned back to gaze longingly at the _Shiram's_ Actina-class shuttle attached to the octagonal door behind her, then turned back and stared at the long, silvery-gray walls of the alien super dreadnought, its clean, spartan interior, and industrial, tiled floor. "Feels like the end of an era, doesn't it?"

"Sure," Chief Engineer Daro'Xen vas Moreh replied as she took in the sights, "but it's the start of one, too." The two continued walking down the hallway of the _Everest_ with the visitors to the migrant fleet towards a contingent of humans. The airlock doors behind the group closed with a soft swish as the shuttle departed.

"Yeah, maybe," Yuhi turned to her friend, "but I'll miss being a captain."

"Says the first quarian ambassador in 300 years," Daro'Xen beamed at Yuhi. "Just remember that you'll be able to answer questions that no Quarian in history has ever even thought to ask."

"Ever the scientist, eh Daro? Speaking of which, Admiral Cole-"

The human admiral stopped with his contingent of black-armored soldiers next to a group of troopers with light-brown metal armor atop gray clothes. "Chief scientist, marines, Corporal Pressly here," he waved his hand past the first soldier in gray, "will escort you to the hospital. You can work with the ship's chief doctor, Lieutenant Commander Enders and the XO, Commander Maximovna to get some sterile living space set up for you and your folks. Now, Chief Engineer Daro'Xen vas Moreh was it?"

"Yes-"

"I'm going to ask that you and your team please refrain from conducting your interview-slash-pen-testing until after we get underway. Tyr needs his full attention on systems diagnostics. Clear?"

"Perfectly clear, Admiral," Daro'Xen responded, "and again, thank you for this opportunity."

"Not a problem. Lastly, while onboard, I'm going to require that all alien visitors be escorted by an armed guard at all times. If boarded, UNSC standard operating procedure would be to wipe the AI and self-destruct but I'm fine with bending the rules a bit. Clear?"

"Of course, Admiral," Yuhi interjected, "not a problem."

Admiral Cole put his the knuckles of his very alien five-fingered hands atop his hips and took a deep breath. "Good. Ambassador, Gunny, you're with me. Everyone else, dismissed." The various soldiers yelled out a rattling "sir!" before turning around and going about their business, quarians in tow. A quarian marine, Mal'Rofal, stayed behind to guard the quarian ambassador. "Now," the human admiral started towards the bridge as the others followed, "these 'turians' and 'batarians.' The _Everest_ is a sitting duck. I need to know what I'm up against, here. Weapons, armor, defense, strategy." Despite his advanced age, Cole walked briskly through the moderately wide, completely unidentifiable, twisting hallways of the _Everest_.

Yuhi wasn't sure what a duck was, or a sitting duck for that matter, but standing idly by in what equated to enemy territory was always dangerous proposition. "Well, defenses are the standard mass effect-based ones," she began knowing that the humans were new to the technology, "kinetic barriers and thick, ablative armor, though nothing like yours. Turian ships are universally better than batarian ones, might I add. If you prepare for a turian attack, you can handle a batarian attack."

Cole nodded in understanding to the ambassador as he continued his brisk pace down the hallway. "Good to know. What's the maximum energy dissipation of turian barriers per unit time? And is there a maximum per impulse? Is concentrated fire more effective than sustained barrage? Will their shields leak from a massive burst?"

"That depends." Yuhi took a deep breath. Arming galactic newcomers with artificial intelligence with this information sat uneasily with her. "While no one in the quarian fleet would have access to hard numbers, most fighting slows down when ships overheat. Keeping weapons firing, barriers up, point defense lasers going, and engines burning radiates a lot of heat. Outlasting the enemy could be a viable tactic, I suppose, though it doesn't happen since everyone has the same defenses."

Mal sped up momentarily to join the line of people walking across the hallway. "I don't know specifics about their defenses besides the standard stuff but I did watch an interview with a turian admiral on the news. He claimed their newest dreadnought could shoot a twenty kilo slug every two seconds at nearly one-point-one percent the speed of light."

"Mhmm," Cole paused his movement for a bit to think before he continued walking. "Thanks, that gives me some idea. What kind of ships stand up to a shot like that?"

"A cruiser could take a shot like that and lose most or all of its barrier strength, but a frigate would probably just get vaporized," Yuhi responded. "Frigates rely on their maneuverability to evade kill shots like that at distance."

"To respond to a shot that quick," Cole trailed off for a moment, "your ships must be extremely maneuverable."

"Compared to this lumbering beast?" Mal chuckled, "probably."

"Don't fool yourself," Jon chimed in, "this old gal can hustle."

The group of four turned left around a corner, then a right. Human soldiers and crewmen passed by in gray garbs and armor, all armed, and all saluted the human admiral. The admiral nodded back in acknowledgement as he continued talking. "What's the maneuvering mechanism?"

"Localized mass-effect fields," the ambassador explained. "They change the mass of the ship in an area while engine output remains unaffected."

"Like a door on a hinge," responded Cole thoughtfully.

"Yes, almost exactly like that," Yuhi smiled.

Mal took the pause in conversation to sate his curiosity. "What about human ships? What's the output on those massive guns on the front of the _Everest_?"

Yuhi turned her head to gauge the humans' reaction. The human soldier, Jon, smiled ever so slightly at the question. Pride, maybe?

Cole's skyllian-five face was as unmoving as ever. "Valiant-class ship main cannon information is classified as secret," he paused his explanation, "but a Charon-class frigate's magnetic accelerator cannon is one hundred eighty three meters long and fires a six hundred ton projectile at thirty thousand meters per second. That's a little over two times as powerful as your dreadnought by energy alone, but the shot speed is considerably slower."

"But you don't use the mass effect?" Yuhi asked.

"Nope, just some coils, capacitors, and reactors. Recharge time is lengthier, too."

Mal lifted his eyebrows slightly. "So this ship is more powerful?"

"Yep," Cole responded with his usual dry as-a-matter-of-factness, "every shot should be a kill shot if we can hit our target."

The four members of the group rounded a corner and past a door with a few defensive emplacements behind it. A human woman with stark yellow hair and bright blue eyes turned to see who entered. "Admiral on deck!" she yelled out, as the two-dozen or so humans on the bridge immediately stopped what they were doing and stood at attention.

"At ease," Cole responded with an immeasurable fatigue. The bridge immediately came back to life as the humans began the difficult task of resuscitating a long-dead ship. "Commander," he addressed his charge, "you're relieved. Work with Doc Enders and the quartermaster on setting up some living spaces for our guests, then get yourself some shut-eye."

"Aye-aye, sir," she saluted, and walked off.

Yuhi hadn't ever actually seen the bridge as she was trapped in a hallway a few hundred meters away. As befitting the nerve-center of a ship of such size, it was as busy as a garrah hive. Dozens of humans paced in and out with an unfailing sense of urgency. The ship-wide standard gray enclosed the entirety of the large yet cramped room. In the center, a large table hooked into the floor with a glowing blue surface dominated most of the open space- a very large holotable. Above it hung displays stretching across the entirety of the vertical space above it. Further out from the centerpiece, various consoles, monitors, crash-seats, smaller holographic pedestals, and a seemingly infinite number of buttons took up the majority of the remaining space. Twenty, maybe thirty people were seated in various locations, all facing forward.

"Tyr," Cole said as he walked over to a well-worn chair and looked at a glowing pedestal front and left of him, "give me a ship-wide rundown."

From the table, the spectral form of a nearly naked male human with a single hand appeared. "Yes sir!" he said with enthusiasm. "Life support, magnetic accelerator cannons, and the upper main reactionless drive are fully functional. Point-defense is mostly functional. Reactors two and five are offline- damaged by the slipspace backblast back on Viperidae- but engineering is working on it. Translight drive is also offline, but replacement parts are being fabricated. All other reactionless drives are offline but the selenium for the coils is being processed as we speak. Both will be online in less than a day. Armor is heavily damaged and the superstructure is extremely warped, especially in the aft 40-percent of the ship. Nothing we can do to fix that, sir."

Yuhi's eyes widened as a real-life AI spoke to Admiral Cole before she turned to her bodyguard, Mal'Rofal vas Shiram. Her eyes widened further when she saw that Mal had his hand over his sidearm. The human marines reacted in kind and raised their krogan-sized weapons at the quarian bodyguard.

"At ease, Mal," Yuhi ordered her bodyguard.

Mal looked at Yuhi's tense posture, then back to the AI, and finally to the irritated face of the human admiral. "Yes sir," the quarian said with no small amount of mistrust.

"Old habits die hard, marine?" Cole asked the tensed quarian.

"Yes, Admiral Cole. My apologies," Mal said while gazing down at the floor for a few moments.

"Don't let it happen again," the alien admiral chided the burly marine with a parental-like disappointment, "Tyr, let engineering know the slipspace and reactionless drives are top priority. We're sitting ducks without them."

"Yes sir!" the hologram enthusiastically replied, raising his lone, incorporeal hand to his right temple before disappearing.

"Now, ambassador, marine," the admiral fell back into his chair before turning, "feel free to grab a seat," as he motioned to the spare chairs in the wall, "and tell me about turian armor."

The discussion, or maybe interrogation, continued for almost an hour. Cole and assorted bridge staff pulled as much information as they could from the quarians on the bridge. The bridge itself never calmed down during the hectic rush to pull the ship back together. "Material transfer from the _QCS_ _Xaavum_ complete," someone said. "Engineering reports slipspace turbo-encabulator fabrication is complete," said someone else. "MAC diagnostics show it's at 100 percent." "Bridge is detecting a shimmy in Helix 47. Can you confirm?" "Bridge is ready to begin starboard-side maneuvering thruster twenty-one diagnostics."

While the human crew was running around, a map of the system was positioned in the center of the bridge. The mass relay with the _Shiram_ orbiting twenty kilometers away. Another thirty kilometers away sat the _Everest_ and the _Xaavum_ , a quarian mining barge, both menacingly pointed at anything that could come through the mass relay.

"Admiral, the gate is activating!" someone yelled out.

The human admiral turned to the former quarian captain. "Yuhi, are we expecting anyone?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Tyr, open shipwide comms." The admiral didn't wait for an acknowledgement, clearly having practiced this plenty of times before. "This is Admiral Cole. Battlestations, everyone, tactical condition two. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill." Cole turned his head slightly to a human officer at a bridge station. "Jackson, how's the MAC charge?"

"One hundred percent, sir!" the dark-skinned alien yelled back.

"Good." Cole repositioned himself on his crash seat. He leaned forward, slightly. "Rotate the Everest to face past the exit point of the relay. Tyr, you have the guns. If whatever comes through there is hostile, blow it to pieces." A chorus of acknowledgement echoed through the bridge room as monitors throughout the bridge displayed the various maneuvering thrusters arrayed across the hull firing at full blast.

Moments later, the holo pedestal next to the vice admiral produced a holograph of Tyr as powerful external cameras attempted to resolve a visual on the new ships. "Five contacts, Vice Admiral." Ambassador Yuhi made a mental note to deposit some credits in her cursing jar. "Four corvettes and a frigate." The bridge went quiet as the AI spoke. "Citadel IFF tags show them as belonging to the 'Turian Hierarchy.' They're opening fire on the _Shiram_ , sir!"

The identification confused her- frigate? The identification of ships she knew as cruisers and frigates as corvettes struck a chord of curiosity in Yuhi before the realization of what the AI was saying hit her. "No!" she yelled out.

"Fire on the frigate, if possible. Second shot on the corvette if the frigate dies. Prepare to launch all fighters on my mark. Get me visuals on the battle." Vice Admiral Preston Cole had experience, that much was clear, but his calm right now was almost unnerving. Every order was said with total calm and after each order, people moved with practiced precision.

A monitor switched the _Shiram_ , then another monitor switched to the largest turian ship, what Yuhi instantly identified as a turian cruiser. The enemy ship was firing at the quarian-owned frigate and not a moment later, the _Shiram's_ barriers fell. Cole's _Everest_ gently shook in response as the main gun fired. A gout of flame erupted from the other side of the turian cruiser as the enormous shell obliterated kinetic barriers, cut through armor like so many centimeters of qwib-qwib batter, and exited out of the other side carrying with it chunks of scrap and body parts. The shot, however, did not come in time to save the Shiram from a withering barrage of turian fire. Its reactor went critical in a bright flash as the light of over eighty quarian souls were extinguished.

"Turian frigate destroyed as is the _Shiram_ , Vice Admiral. No survivors from the Shiram." the AI said. Its hologram, clearly a male human, turned to Yuhi, "We'll get revenge for this injustice to your people, Ambassador."

Yuhi walked back into her crash seat and slumped her way into it. _They can't be dead_ , she thought. Her marine bodyguard tensed up, but she didn't say a word.

The ship shook again. "Another corvette down!" another human yelled out. The monitor displayed the fiery end of some decent number of turian crew as the _Everest's_ shell gored the tiny vessel, nearly vaporizing it. The venting atmosphere of the ship threw shards of metal and pieces of turian crew spherically outwards from the impact site.

"Two corvettes just did a precision jump behind us, sir!" another yelled out.

The admiral reacted with machine-like efficiency. "Target the port-side corvette with a salvo of archers. Split the longswords up across both of the remaining enemy ships at aft. Charge the MACs. Pilots, try swinging by the bow for a kill shot. Tyr, you have control of the main guns."

"Archers away!" A monitor showed hundreds of missiles streaming at one of the frigates. Point-defense lasers started chewing through the swarm of seekers though it was nowhere near enough. Dozens upon dozens missiles slammed into kinetic barriers as a flight of human fighters descended upon the turian ship.

As the comms on the bridge opened up with fighter pilot chatter, the turian ship at the gate fled from the fight and back through the mass relay. Yuhi knew turians never ran-this was a tactical decision to inform turian command.

"Red group on approach!" "Bugeye just got hit!" "Their point defense lasers are weak as shit!" "Armor heating up!" "The big fucker's fast!" "Guns ain't doin' shit!" The main guns of the human fighters had next to no effect on the kinetic barriers, but the salvo of missiles from the _Everest_ knocked the barriers of one of the turian frigates. That was enough. "Bogey five is on fire!" "Escape pods are being jettisoned!" " _Everest,_ pour the helix point-defense guns into it!" Moments later, one red dot became a yellow one, then disappeared off of the map entirely as the humans continued pouring a deluge of projectiles onto the vessel.

"Cole here," the admiral talked into the pedestal next to his chair, "see if you can move the last one past the main guns. We'll take it out."

"Roger that!" responded a pilot, "all fighters converge on bogey four!"

The admiral's idea ended up not being necessary. Between the volume of fire from the fighters, the ship overheating from constant usage of its point-defense GARDIAN lasers, and the unending barrage of missiles, the little turian ship eventually bowed out of the battle with an explosion.

The Admiral addressed his crew almost immediately afterwards. "Good job everyone. Thanks, Tyr." The holographic AI bowed as the admiral continued, "get started on damage reports and bring up engineering." A redheaded human male popped up on a monitor. "Lieutenant MacQuinn, what's the ETA on the drives."

The engineer scratched the red fur on his head, "well, I think we awt-ta get it to ya in 14 hours."

The admiral turned to the quarians on the bridge. "How long before they bring a larger fleet here?"

Yuhi snapped herself out of her quiet mourning, "umm, maybe five hours? They have a colony only a few relays away."

"You hear that, Lieutenant? You have four hours. This is absolute priority. If you need anything, you have it. You," the admiral pointed to another bridge officer, "Get a flight of pelicans to search for Quarian survivors only. No turians. Tyr," he turned to the AI, "open a comm to the quarian mining vessel, the Xaavum."

"Wait," Yuhi stood up from daze, "why not rescue the turians?"

Cole turned to Yuhi. "Food shortage," he callously replied.

"We have to pick them up," the quarian ambassador yelled out, "it's the right thing to do! If my ship were blown up, I'd want to get rescued!"

"My ship, my orders. If they wanted to get rescued, they shouldn't have shot at us without provocation." Cole turned back to the monitor he was previously glancing at, ending the conversation. "Tyr, that connection?"

"Admiral, this is Captain Hula'Sunar vas Xaavum." The quarian captain was grimacing. "Thank you for your assistance."

"Not a problem, captain. Listen, when we're up and operational, we'll go first and cover your escape. You can follow us and warp out."

"Admiral Preston'Cole vas Everest, your ship is so much more important. The _Xaavum_ , well, it's just a freighter but onboard, you hold the future of both of our people. We'll fight to the death for you."

The human admiral stood there for a moment, tapping his thumb and middle finger against each other for a moment. "Alright Captain, transfer all of your nonessential personnel and gear to the Everest. I think I have a plan."

Minutes felt like hours and hours felt like days to the silently grieving captain. Yuhi's back was positioned fully against the worn, black material of the crash seat as her head rested against the right side of the semi-circular headrest. She hadn't moved much from her seat since the _Shiram_ exploded and instead just kept her gaze fixed on the in-system monitor.

A depressing blue background overlayed a series of yellow lines indicating orbital trajectories, a few red circles from assorted celestial bodies, and blinking white marks showing turian crew that had been spaced from the recent battle. One or two had since stopped blinking and turned into the dull gray of space debris. Oxygen tanks had limits and theirs had been reached.

Yuhi imagined herself floating through the void, the backdrop of the stars lighting through her tinted facial mask, finding it increasingly difficult to breathe- how miserable such a death would be. At least the crew of- no, her family- on the _Shiram_ died quickly.

She laboriously moved her head to look at Mal. He had been leaning forward, elbows on his thighs, head looking at the floor. Him and Liru had been close for many years. Yuhi could only imagine what was going through his mind.

Had her decisions up to this point been correct, she wondered to herself. Would it truly be worth to unleash such a heartless species, such monsters, on the galactic community even if it may benefit the quarians in the short term? What about the long term? Even after the assistance from the admiralty board, would these humans just let the quarians suffocate in space as well?

"Sir," the black-armored soldier, Jon, from the trip to the migrant fleet stepped forward to the admiral, "permission to speak freely?"

"Go ahead, Gunny." Admiral Cole didn't look up from his datapad as he responded.

"Sir, what you said onboard the _Neema_ about us being the last humans." Jon took his right hand as scratched the back of his neck, "How likely do you think that is?"

The admiral looked up and met Jon's gaze. "Don't cross your fingers, son," he coldly responded.

"Sir."

 _It's for the best,_ the ambassador silently thought to herself. Yuhi's mind raced through images and solcitudes of geth, the quarian-built homicidal AI, and the rachni, an insectoid species hell-bent on annihilating all life besides itself. _No, the last thing the galaxy needs is another galactic horror_.

"Admiral," a human officer called out, "engineering just called. Slipspace drive is up."

The admiral stood at the bridge with his two asari-like legs in an upside-down V shape and his hands behind his back, one hand holding the other. "Good. Let me know when the fusion drives are operational. Ambassador," the admiral turned to face the seated quarian, "I need your head in the game right now."

She quickly looked up. "I'm fine," she defiantly responded.

"Good. These relays," Cole turned to the holographic display table in the center of the bridge, arms still at rest behind him, "Tyr, galactic map." The table in the center of the bridge changed to display a crisp picture of the milky tones of the galaxy with the known mass relay network overlaid on top of it. "Zoom in on where we are." The map did as it was ordered. "Good. We're here," he pointed to the coordinates before placing his arm back, "right at the edge of this spiral arm." A blinking green box was overlaid atop a blue node representing a secondary relay. Bright, white lines sprouted from the point across the edge of the "So this a secondary relay, correct?"

"That's right, admiral" Yuhi lifted herself out of her seat, "secondary relays connect to a small network of other secondary relays spanning a few hundred light years or so each, and the secondary-prime relay is usually in a system with one or more prime relays, which connect to each other. Those are usually a thousand or more light years apart."

Cole rumbled a guttural acknowledgement. "The system over, this 'prime relay.' We predict that it will hop over the edge of this galactic arm and right into the next one, but first we need to get there. What can we expect, monitoring-wise, in the system over?"

"There's going to be a sensor system dropped by prior turian patrols, of course, but we saw no communications buoy. Those are expensive. Patrols just drop by and pick up the sensor data rather than have it relayed in real-time."

"And just to confirm, that's located on the opposite prime relay, the active one going back to citadel space?"

Yuhi confirmed the information as the admiral's second-in-command entered the room. The admiral turned back, satisfied. Mass relays were often located past any major planetary bodies in a region known as the Kuiper belt. "That's about 9 light hours from our relay to their sensor. We'll be long gone before they even see us."

"Unless they have a fleet at the relay, sir," the admiral's XO corrected.

"That's what the backup plan is for."

"Vice Admiral, sir," a human woman with black hair and muted brown skin called out, "engineering just called. Fusion drives are back online!"

"Tyr, ship-wide comm." Admiral Preston Cole vas Everest stood near the center of the bridge, paced for a bit, then looked around at his charges. "This is Admiral Preston Cole. We are about to embark on a mission to go through unknown space and find our way back home. Battlestations, everyone, until we're in slipspace towards Earth. When we're all back home at a bar, the first round is on me." The admiral paused as a cheer erupted for a short moment. "All crew, prepare for hard burn in two minutes."

The Marines guarding the bridge door pulled hidden compartments from the bridge walls out to reveal more of the same black crash chairs present throughout the ship. Everyone frantically moved to strap themselves and their belongings into place.

"Take us to the mass relay at maximum speed," Cole announced, "Captain Hula, have _Xaavum_ follow."

A chorus of aye ayes and yes sirs echoed out as a constant, gentle rumble from the massive engines and inertial compensators reverberated through the massive dreadnought. The holotable in the center showed the lumbering column of metal that was the _Everest_ approaching the solar system's relay. The map showed the relay being brought closer- slowly, at first, then faster and faster. In a minute or two, the signal was sent and the relay's rings began spinning. Electricity danced on the intricate protrusions of the human vessel before it was flung a few hundred light years into a new territory.

"Contacts!" yelled out a sensor officer.

Not a second later, the sensor projection lit up as the bridge lights dimmed to an expectant crimson. "We're seeing three-no, over four hundred contacts." The AI on the holographic podium glanced up at the admiral, still looking ahead at the tactical map with the _Everest_ at the center facing a sea of red dots. "Two cruisers, two hundred thirty two frigates, and one hundred ninety nine corvettes. All of apparent turian make, Vice Admiral."

"We're going to plan B. Helm, engines to one hundred twenty percent. Captain Hula," the admiral stood straight up from his chair, knocked his boots together, and brought his right hand up to his temple in a rapid motion, "it has been an honor."

The quarian freighter captain looked down for a moment before looking back at the monitor. "Keelah se'lai, Admiral Preston'Cole vas Everest, and may the ancestors guide you."

Unlike human slipspace drives, mass effect-based faster than light travel happens in real space. Complex calculations are required to ensure that no major bodies of matter are between the ship and its target destination and, when those calculations are complete, a bubble of spacetime extends over the vessel as it careens through the void of space at blisteringly quick velocities.

The crew of the _Xaavum_ mining freighter, however, chose to ignore those calculations entirely. When the freighter went to FTL, it ran into a major body of matter known as a turian cruiser (what the humans were calling a frigate). The remnants of the _Xaavum_ , without an active mass effect field, now slowed to a speed just under the speed of light in the form of a shower of extremely energetic constituent particles. Those same particles then ran into another turian cruiser, and then finally into two frigates, annihilating the freighter and all of the targets entirely, crew and all.

A burst of ferocious acceleration from the _Everest_ threw the human admiral back into his crash seat. "Push through the hole. Fire the MAC at anything that gets in our way."

Turian frigates, about the same size as the _Shiram_ , moved to fill the gap while the rest of the fleet turned to begin firing. The main cannon fired once, then again a second later. Explosions lit up the monitors in the bridge. "Two corvettes down, but we have a third in the way." The ship started shaking from the volume of fire pouring down on it and alarms started blaring.

The admiral didn't skip a beat. "Drive through it. Adjust azimuth to face the primary gate out of the galactic arm." Emergency thrusters at the aft of the ship fired throwing the occupants of the _Everest_ into the left side of the crash chairs.

Objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In this case, the outside force was a relatively miniscule turian frigate which conveniently slowed the angular and forward velocity of the hulking, human-made vessel. "Starboard-side decks 27 through 30 are losing pressure! Starboard-side superstructure reporting buckling! Port-side decks 10 through 15 are reporting atmospheric leaks! We're taking massive damage!" an officer yelled out.

Plan B had been to place the _Everest_ right in the center of a turian armada. The turian's heavier ships couldn't fire on the human super dreadnought without worry of friendly fire or return fire from the _Everest's_ terrifying main cannons, so they didn't.

"Engaging slipspace drive!" yelled out the pilot.

Space itself seemed to warp and time itself seemed to slow for just a moment. A glittering, blue sheen rippled on the surfaces of the bridge and its occupants and a split second later, it was gone. The monitors connected to the outside cameras turned pitch black and, what seemed like a minute later, turned back to their usual starry selves.

"50 kilometers from the gate!" yelled the pilot, referring to his slipspace exit. The human-made FTL went through matter like it didn't even exist- stars, planets, ships, they may have all as well been motes of star dust.

"Good job. Burn hard for it. Engines to full."

"Full speed ahead!" yelled the pilot.

"Sensor contacts, sir!" warned the AI, "above and below the solar plane!" The galactic map updated to match the new information, "they're firing at our engines!"

"Evasive maneuvers. Fire forward-movement emergency thrusters."

"Firing!" responded the pilot. A split second later, a jolt of acceleration crushed everyone back into the crash seats well past the limits of the ships' inertial compensators. Yuhi's arm fell back into the arm of the chair, possibly breaking it. Definitely bruised, at least.

"Activating the relay!" shouted the pilot.

"Engine cowling has been breached!" yelled out the alien called Jackson, "main engine two is overheating! Cutting engine power down to seventy-five percent!"

"Relay activated, entering in three, two, one!"

Every monitor went blank for a moment and the system map flickered before coming back up to an entirely new display.

"Contacts?" asked the admiral. The screen started populating with dozens of green dots, not red ones like in the previous systems.

"Sir," Tyr began, "I'm reading human-pattern identify friend-foe signatures. Most ships in orbit are UNSC. There's a defense garrison in orbit, sir, fourteen ships. Another ship off the port-bow belonging something called 'Joint Species Alliance.' It's next to an ONI base. Colony is called Shanxi. It's human, sir."

"Did our comms make it?"

"Bidirectional? Only tertiary comms, sir, so just radio." someone responded.

"How's the FTL?"

"Only a single charge coil is functioning, Vice Admiral, sir. It'll take us about five minutes to go to FTL."

"Start spinning up the FTL and burn hard towards the planetoid this gate is orbiting. We'll go for a slingshot to gather speed. Open a comm, system-wide, unencrypted, maximum power."

"Open, sir."

"This is Vice Admiral Preston Cole of the UNSC, onboard the _UNSC Everest_. We have a hostile alien fleet on our tail coming through that gate. Requesting immediate assistance. We have friendly first contact VIPs onboard and our slipspace charging coils are damaged." Seconds later, dozens of turian ships began streaming into the system.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

A special thanks to DragoLord19D for beta-reading this chapter. If anyone else is interested, let me know.

First-off: reviews. I want to thank people tremendously for their constructive criticism, questions, and general interest. Hopefully this is better written- more descriptive, better flow, that kind of thing.

Secondly, I'm really happy that everyone seems to like the story. It's fun writing it and even more fun cracking open the ol' college textbooks, calculating differences between spaceships, and getting into the minds of the people that would have to reconcile these differences on the fly. This chapter took a while as I had to dust off the ever-relevant "Quantitative Astronomy" by Thomas Swihart, a fantastic if terse book on things like astronomical time, coordinate systems, and general back-of-the-envelope calculations which are forever useful. Surely a book like that would be required reading for any starship captain and their crew. If considering a career switch to interstellar explorer, I recommend giving it a good once-over, or maybe even a twice-over.

Now, the next chapter will take some time to get out the door. I've been having a lot of trouble writing space battles that don't sound like simulation log files or chess instructions. If anyone has any recommendations for books, short stories, etc that have interesting spaceship to spaceship combat, let me know through PM or review so I can engage in that most sincerest form of flattery known as imitation. In the meantime, I'll write the future chapters during downtime.

Some took skepticism to my "lack of genetic diversity" claim from the previous chapter. While I have no idea if this is valid or not, I'm basing my numbers on "Estimation of a genetically viable population for multigenerational interstellar voyaging: Review and data for project Hyperion" by C. Smith who puts a lower bound of 14,000 people for safety. Marathon-class heavy cruisers have complements of 1,000 people (unclear if that is or is not considering marine compliments; Halo: Fall of Reach pg 242) so the _Everest_ , at 25% larger, must not have a dramatically larger crew. I've been keeping it at around 1,400 in my mind, so an order of magnitude less than the lower-bound specified within the paper.

Additionally, the _Everest's_ AI has been active for some time now- assume at least a year- and inevitably, rampancy will set in. To search for new life-supporting stars may take years and years, meaning the AI will stop being active at some point and the _Everest_ will have to become generational, the crew will have to cycle in and out of cryo, and maintenance nightmares will set in. The _Everest's_ best bet, Cole believes, is to find humanity, or whatever's left of them, and see where they all stand.

Finally, and extremely related to the point related to college textbooks, several calculable space things happened here but I like to talk a bit about Cole's plan B maneuver, where that came from, and why it could be even remotely plausible given how the various technologies works in canon.

We begin with special relativity: nothing moves faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Full stop. What does that mean?

The best explanation starts with an example. Let's say I've got a great way to launch satellites into space at 95% the speed of light. The first thing that I launch is _another_ launcher that launches much smaller satellites at 95% the speed of light. So now we have two objects: one is the first launched object that goes at 95% the speed of light, and another is an object that's hauling ass at 190% the speed of light. _Or is it?_

It's not. The second object, relative to you, is moving at ~99.9% the speed of light (I'll be honest here and say that I didn't calculate the reference frame changes but the example is still sound, but I'm a few decimal points off) because the speed of light is the cosmic speed limit of everything. It's also why we can't just strap big honkin' rockets to a pod and drive our way over to Proxima Centauri from Earth: no matter how fast we go, it would still take us a minimum of 4+ years! So, why is that speed limit thing happening?

High school graduates may be familiar with the question for classical kinetic energy: mass times velocity squared divided by 2. Special relativity states that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. One of the adjustments that special relativity makes is something called the Lorentz factor, which actually scales the right side of that kinetic energy question relative to your speed. When moving really slowly in a cosmic sense, such as driving some exotic racecar an average of 200 kilometers per hour on the autobahn, the factor is very close to one. However, when your speed approaches the speed of light, it takes more and more energy to increase your speed. The end result is that you can never actually reach the speed of light, even with an infinite amount of energy at your disposal. One way to think about the effect is that your mass just keeps increasing and increasing the faster you move, preventing you from ever reaching the speed of light. This leads to the unpopular but technically effective weight-loss program of "standing perfectly still," but I digress.

Then we introduce the mass effect and its implications into special relativity. A mass effect field works by increasing or decreasing mass. The field can't just make your ship a few kilos lighter- as long as your mass is above zero, the equation is still asymptotic and you can never actually go above the cosmic speed limit of light. No, it would make sense that faster than light travel through the mass effect is achieved by reducing mass to _below 0_ , also known as "negative mass," which creates utterly bizarre effects like runaway motion. Negative mass is used in certain exotic, experimentally unproven (obviously) hypothesis for things like wormholes or the Alcubierre drive.

FTL in the Mass Effect universe, however, doesn't use such mechanics. It's hinted at that mass effect drives propel ships faster than the speed of light in _real-space_ which is mind-boggling to even think about to the mildly trained physicist that I am, but I try my best, damn it. When moving faster than light under a mass effect field, you get kinetic energy that's both imaginary and negative and I just don't even understand what that means (and the universe might not either), so I just took it as lots and lots of regular energy and moved on with my life, and the story (this is where I raise a toast to the fiction part of science fiction).

Particles with imaginary mass are called tachyons, by the way, so feel free to read up on those and ruin approximately 20% of Star Trek plotlines for yourselves forever. For the more math-savvy reader, I recommend "An Introduction to the Theory of Tachyons" by R. Vieira (arXiv:1112.4187) and "Classical Tachyons and Possible Applications" by E. Recami.

Pivoting wildly, cosmic rays. We talked about a possible mechanism for cosmic ray production last chapter called "diffuse shock acceleration," and the briefly about the properties of cosmic rays. When these cosmic rays slam into our earthly atmosphere, they break apart into more and more particles. This cascade of particles is called called a cosmic [ray] shower. Each level of the shower generates more and more particles with each moving more and more slowly until those particles impact the ground. This mechanism right here is Einstein's famous mass-energy relation in action. Experiments like Super-Tiger and the Pierre Auger Observatory are examples of experiments performing indirect measurements on cosmic rays by measuring cosmic ray showers. This is also one of the functions our atmosphere serves in protecting our fragile, fleshy, human bodies from deadly space radiation and part of why a colony on Mars may be so difficult (nevermind getting there).

But regularmother, what does that have to do with anything? Great question! I treated the _QCS Xaavum_ as a block of matter traveling with extremely high energy in real space and Cole, a clever commander and brilliant physicist in his own right (calculating new slipspace travel mechanisms, for instance) happened to know about cosmic ray showers. Putting the two together lead to some pretty explosive results!


	6. The Fight

**Commander Shepard  
** _ **JSSV Horizon**_ **,** Horizon-class Exploration Frigate  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 3, 2561**

Commander Hannah Shepard sat in her captain's quarters next to the bridge of the first Joint Species Alliance ship, the first purpose-built exploration vessel in a hundred years, and the first ship commissioned with a multi-species crew in mind. It incorporated advancements from both species- the UNSC's new Mark XII Macedon slipspace drive, jointly-designed pulse lasers, a Musashi Heavy Industries ZPF-X3-F fusion reactor, you name it. Even if the Joint Species Alliance existed only on her ship as an effectively farcical organization and the _Joint Species Space Vessel Horizon_ was effectively under UNSC FLEETCOM control, the venture was, arguably, a greater step forward for reconciliation and progress in human-alien relations than the limited joint-species access on Shanxi, and the greatest since, well, the end of the war.

She remembered the day she first saw the ship at the Reyes-McLees Shipyard at Mars, its graceful yet threatening form, various curved and sharp edges, and gleaming white armor that turned purple when the light hit it just so made it look like the start of a new era. Like hope, even. Talking to its lead designers, Samantha Cole and the sangheili Thyco 'Tegram had only reinforced those feelings. Its classic, boxy yet squat design mimicked the threatening queues found in the Strident heavy frigates yet it somehow looked dignified, refined, and independent. Hell of a lot nicer-looking than the first ship she was stationed on, the _Everest_ , back in '41 _._

On the opposite side of her bed, the television was playing Humanity's News Network on mute. Text about miscellaneous, lesser news danced across the bottom of the screen- _...Singh calls the Mantle a farce; More ONI Blackgate_ _documents leaked; Jiralhanae homeworld siege con.._. Talking heads giving a crude summary of the great war were superimposed over images of the tomb world of Harvest. Commander Shepard's attention was elsewhere as she looked at the video screen in front of her, the display alive with her children in daycare on the lone colony in the system, Shanxi.

"And that's Lobabo's favorite poem!" Jane exclaimed.

Hannah snapped out of her reverie. "Aw, is that right, honey?" Lobabo and Iyaga were a bonded mgalekgolo pair and, together with a retired human soldier and an old sangheili swordmaster, formed a daycare center that Shepard's children attended, near the outskirts of Shanxi's capital city. Lobabo himself rumbled a note of approval in the background. "Hey, could you get John on for me, honey?"

"Yes, mom." Jane turned and, at the top her lungs, yelled an ear-piercing "JOHN! Mom's on the phone!"

A distant "coming!" could be heard, followed by the stomping of a five year old's feet through a hallway.

"Thanks, baby," Hannah warmly smiled, "I wish I could be groundside with you. Listen, I'll talk to you soon, okay?" Shepard would have been tucking her daughter into bed had her ship's interferometer not detected what appeared to a gravitational wave coming from the artifact just inside of the kuiper belt of the Shanxi system yesterday. Now, her _Horizon_ sat next to the ONI base built to examine the strange alien object, with its smooth, covenant-esque teardrop shape and curious floating rings, the commander at the ready to evacuate the researchers onboard.

"I'm not a baby!" Jane Shepard rebelliously turned to look at the doorway. The frown on the young girl's face just tore right into Hannah, though the sight of John barging through the doorway suitably offset that feeling.

"Of course you're a big girl now, but you'll always be my baby." Jane turned back at the camera and the slightest hint of a smile peeked through her frown. She climbed onto the back of her enormous daycare monitor as John's face took up the vid screen.

"Hey mom!"

"Hey John! How's it going?" his mother asked, a massive grin spreading across her face as she did so. John's energy, enthusiasm, and purity always brought Hannah happiness, especially after her husband passed away three years ago.

"Great!" John said, practically jumping as he did, "Gym master Ludomai," he made a series of karate poses as he began explaining, "said I'd be a great warrior one day and bring honor to my kaidon!"

"Yeah?" Hannah sat back and stymied a chuckle, though her massive smile betrayed her emotions entirely.

"Yeah! Him and I are training in our spare time!" John picked up an empty bottle of milk and made a thrusting motion with it as though it were a rapier. "Watch out, covies!"

"Sounds like pretty tough training!"

"Yeah! Hey mom, Mister Ludomai told me that a great warrior is pure of body and mind, but you smoke. How can you defend yourself if you're smoking?"

An alert popped up in the bottom left of the screen. Shit, what now? "Johnny," Hannah glanced down at the console below the screen with a look of exasperation before looking back, "the crew needs mommy. I'll have to talk to you later, okay, and we can talk about smoking then. For next time, your assignment is to think of a birthday present for yourself."

"Aye aye, Commander Mom!" John raised his right arm in salute.

"Good job, trooper. Dad would have been proud. Stay safe out there, and take care of your little sister for me." She stared at the screen for a bit as John waved and killed the conversation. Hannah pulled yet another comforting cylinder of tobacco out of her pocket, stuffed it into her mouth with that familiar, practiced motion, and opened the alert window. "What's wrong, Marco?" she asked as she moved a tarnished metallic lighter to the tip of her cigarette. She lit it with her left hand, her right blocking the non-existent wind out of sheer muscle memory.

The ship's onboard artificial intelligence, Marco Polo, popped into view. "Commander, the tuning fork is changing mass. It may be activating."

"What?" Hannah sprinted out of the room, the cabins doors opening with a smooth, mechanical hiss, her lighter in hand. She pulled right, immediately followed by another right to arrive the bridge. "What's the situation?" she asked as the doors opened, cigarette moving with her lips as she spoke.

"Shipmaster," her XO, a sangheili named Sorum'Varum, gave a traditional salute of his fist over his heart, "a signal was sent out from the artifact and its mass has been changing."

Hannah took a drag and exhaled. "Do we know why the sudden mass shift or anything about it?"

"We are blind, shipmaster."

Hannah filed that under the 'fuck ONI' category. They always knew more than they were letting on. "And Marco, what's the deal with the signal?"

A middle aged man in puffy garb appeared from the AI's holotable. "My commander," he began in a thick, venetian accent, "it was more of a pulse than a signal. I cannot make anything of it."

"I'm not taking any chances. Pull the teams off of that ONI base and take us to full combat alert, tac-con two. Arm the HORNET mines they left floating next the tuning fork." The lights changed from a clear white to a soft red as sirens and intercoms began broadcasting to the crew. On the display, the alien object's rings began turning, first slowly. "And make it fast." Hannah put the butt of the lit cigarette to her mouth and pulled as her mind raced through what this device could possibly do and how many of those possibilities ended with the death of everyone onboard. On one monitor, the rings kept spinning faster and faster. On the other, a pair of pelicans left the structure built around the fork.

Her curiosity was sated moments later. The space seemed to bend for a moment as a hulking column of Titanium-A appeared next to the teardrop-shaped artifact. Gashes and impact craters littered its armored form and, from those wounds, fire spewed forth.

"UNSC IFF," Marco chimed in. "It's the _UNSC Everest_ , sir! We're getting a radio transmission, unencrypted."

Hannah stared at the displays in disbelief for a moment before responding. "Patch it through, Marco."

"This is Vice Admiral Preston Cole of the UNSC, onboard the _UNSC Everest_. We have a hostile alien fleet on our tail coming through that gate. Requesting immediate assistance. We have VIPs onboard and our slipspace drive is damaged."

Hundreds of contacts began popping up on sensors and made their way onto the tactical map. Corvettes, frigates, and a few moments after that, a pair of light cruisers. None of them had an IFF and none of them were of a known design.

"Marco, forward the transmission to Shanxi and FLEETCOM. Open an encrypted radio comm to the Everest. Bridge it with Shanxi's battlenet." She cleared her throat. " _UNSC Everest_ , this the _JSSV Horizon._ Burn hard out of there- we have HORNETs in the area."

" _Everest_ here. Ten-four," the distantly familiar voice of Vice Admiral Preston Cole responded.

"This is Rear Admiral Ryder of the Second Fleet, Battlegroup Omaha. Hang tight, Vice Admiral. Shepard, blow those mines and escort Cole. Follow him into his jump."

* * *

 **Rear Admiral Osborn Ryder  
** **UNSC** _ **Lusus**_ **,** Marathon-class cruiser  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 3, 2561**

"Follow him into his jump," Rear Admiral Ryder spoke into the holotable next to his chair. He turned to his first officer. "Get as many soldiers off of this ship and on the ground," then turned back to stare over the bridge. "Battle stations, everyone," he yelled out as his hands clapped together. "Tactical condition two throughout the fleet!" He paused for a moment to digest the words on the tip of his tongue. "I'm initiating Harvest Contingency."

The only thing worse than Winter Contingency was the Harvest Contingency. It was created in the aftermath of the opening salvos of the Human-Covenant War over a planet named Harvest, a breadbasket world with farms as far as the eye could see. The eponymous contingency, more a standard operating procedure, had simple goals. Immediately following the call, control of the entirety of the government is given to the military. Start with asset denial and intelligence gathering, no matter the cost. Then, once intelligence has been gathered, make a ruthless counterattack.

Admiral Ryder scanned the holo display of the system as sensor data poured in from the _Horizon_ over the UNSC battle network, eyes darting back and forth trying to absorb the flurry of information presented. Enemy ships: final count stood at four hundred twenty five. His fleet counted at fourteen, all from Second Fleet, plus the _Horizon_ made fifteen. The hundreds of HORNET nuclear mines around the artifact- gate?- would hopefully even the odds. The enemy fleet was mostly tightly clustered. Perfect.

And Shanxi itself? The planet, Ryder decided immediately, was less important than Vice Admiral Cole. Second fleet would most likely be done with its retrofits in a few weeks at most, plus planets were generally replacement, and people were generally expendable. Cole was not.

Besides, if the _Everest_ was so badly damaged, it was extremely unlikely his roughshod fleet of ancient derelicts could hold off the enemy for any length of time; there were only a pair of operational orbital defense platforms over the main continent, and any attack path the aliens took would lead to them firing right onto the planet itself. No, his ships would be the delaying action.

The action was happening near a barren, atmosphere-less planetoid at the edge of the system. A wolfpack could warp on the far side of the planetoid and slingshot around it, giving them enormous amounts of speed on their initial attack pass. That would take about a minute at most. The brunt of the delaying fleet would warp in on an intercept course, moving right near the _Everest_ and give Cole time.

Ryder's lone stealth corvette, commonly known as a "prowler," a single Sahara-class named the _UNSC Dark Side of the Moon_ , would stay back and provide active intelligence to FLEETCOM. The _Horizon_ was already off of the table, its shipborne pulse laser turrets severely punishing the enemy for haranguing the old Valiant-class heavy cruiser. His three Strident-class heavy frigates would form the wolfpack and harass the escort carriers and cruisers. Their speed, maneuverability, and shielding made them a natural choice for the role.

That left his ten older ships to take the brunt of the punishment for the delaying action: three Paris-class heavy frigates, a Charon-class light frigate, a Halberd-class destroyer, four Stalwart-class light frigates, and his personal ship, the _Lusus_ , a Marathon-class cruiser.

Ryder's train of thought took about ten seconds, and barking his orders out across the 'net another twenty.

White orbs enveloped the ONI base, the alien artifact, and the enemy ships. The _Horizon's_ sensors kept the fleet informed through the massive amounts of radiation: enemy fleet size down to a mere three hundred seventy four. _Everest_ : still heavily damaged, but the fire abated for at least a moment. _Horizon_ : shields dropping precipitously, but pulling troves of valuable data from the _Everest_ through its half-functioning optical link.

Fifty seconds. Any marine still on the _Lusus_ was coming along for the ride. Ryder's cruiser's Mark XI Macedon slipspace drive activated and flung him and his crew smoothly across the system, tunneling right through Shanxi's bulk, past an asteroid field, and right on a near-intercept course one hundred fifty kilometers away from the legendary _Everest_ in the span of a fraction of a second.

The onscreen display smoothly shifted to accommodate the battlegroup's new position in space, bows facing the unknown hostiles. Ryder looked at the screen before barking an order. " _Lusus,_ target on cruiser-one. All ships, primary weapons free." A display showing the magnetic accelerator cannons', or MAC for short, charge dropped by fifty percent as the first of two cannons launched a thousand-ton slug, then down to five percent as the second one followed suit. Fleet combat in the modern age was not the ponderously slow game of waiting for missiles to connect like in the 22nd and 23rd centuries. A single second after firing, the first shot connected left-of-center on the back of the alien cruiser-sized ship, sapping the shields and putting it into a rapid counter clockwise spin. The second bisected the center of the vessel, breaking it in half.

The alien fleet responded with a slight yet frighteningly rapid turn and opened fire on the human fleet. Additional fighters began to saturate the in-system view screen.

"All ships, hold fighters. Fire all nukes, plus a missile compliment." The conventional archer missiles would saturate enemy point-defense, whereas the nuclear weapons would get through, damaging the alien ships and annihilating most of the enemy fighter compliment, or so Ryder hoped.

As the missiles left their tubes, nearly the entirety of the alien fleet pulled a turn- while the angular rotation was small in distance traversed, it was brutally quick in rotational acceleration. What those alien ships lacked in durability, they made up for in maneuverability. Regardless, the opening volley had the desired effect: nearly every ship pulled off of the Everest and onto Ryder's battlegroup.

Battlegroup Omaha's missile swarm began its main burns simultaneously as a precipitous volley of enemy fire began pouring down on the vastly outnumbered UNSC fleet. Every two to three seconds, each ship fired again, counteracting their battlegroup-ward acceleration with the reversely-directioned momentum shift of firing of their cannons.

The missile volley still had the desired effect; over two dozen nuclear detonations popped up across the scanners turning twenty five corvettes, a pair of frigates, and a few hundred fighters into space dust. Green orbital lines from the three frigate wolfpack began wrapping around the planet, intercept course moving into the enemy fleet as their engines fired at full-ahead. Forty seconds until arrival.

Many of the advancing red dots on the tactical map disappeared as the white flashes enveloping them dissipated, potentially saving countless human lives in the future. "Now," Ryder responded, "launch all fighters." About hundred GA-TL1 Longsword heavy interceptors and F-41 Broadsword strike fighters poured out of the human ships at the admiral's command.

Ryder's ship was shaking with the pitter-patter of impacts from the kinetic rounds. Both the battlenet and bridge personnel were yelling about damage, though the ol' warhorse was standing up better than other ships in the group. "The _Tahoma_ just ate it!" yelled someone.

"Doesn't matter," Ryder bore into the officer, "how are the MAC charges?"

"Back to forty percent!"

"Good," Ryder calmly said as he looked back to the holographic display of the system, "Fire another shot. Any target." Green dots- his wolfpack- raced around the dull gray side of the Shanxi 7a. They'd be here in twenty seconds.

"Firing! Direct hit, frigate, vaporized the fucker!" yelled out the sensor officer.

"Alright, everyone, keep up fire at forty percent MAC charge. Fire at will."

"Sir," paused a comms officer, "all other ships are reporting that their cannons are ineffective at these ranges! Opposing ships' evasive maneuvers are too fast!"

Rear Admiral Ryder didn't lift his head to acknowledge the officer, but responded with an order. "Keep the Paris-class heavies as a screen. Move all other ships into knife-fight range." Green dots responded by moving to his command towards the field of red. Another of the Stalwart-class escort frigates vanished as a shot breached its reactor.

"This is Wolfpack Alpha lead!" Five more seconds. "Prepping for initial run! Wolfpack beta, swap stragglers off of our six!"

The lone Stalwart-class frigate and Halberd-class destroy raced into the center of the fleet, missiles and point defense firing with abandon. As the lone destroyer, the _UNSC Widening Gyre_ , charged headlong into the maw of the enemy fleet, it rammed a small corvette that was too busy firing on the thick, sloped armor of the Halberd-class and turned the two hundred meters long turian vessel into debris on the proverbial windshield.

Three Strident-class green dots tore across the northern pole of the small, atmosphere-less moon at a prodigious rate. Each fired three four hundred ton projectiles from its forward-facing heavy coils to counteract their blistering orbital momentum. Two of the nine hit, both on alien corvettes that were too busy firing on the _Lusus_ , annihilating both of them, as the friendly UNSC frigates pulled a high-G turn into the core formation of the fleet, their energy shielding glowing brightly with projectile and laser fire. The wolfpack had arrived.

Opposing corvettes and frigates disengaged from the frenzied fire pouring on the _Lusus_ and formed their own counter-wolfpacks. The _Widening Gyre_ and the two remaining Stalwart-class frigates, the _UNSC Red Light_ and the _UNSC Difference of Opinion_ , fired their maneuvering thrusters in preparation for the flyby. Three shots fired, three ships destroyed. High-velocity debris from the lead corvette crashed into another corvette on its wing, breaking its shields and damaging its anterior-starboard thrusters.

One minute, fifteen seconds into the battle, the enemy countered with maneuvers of its own. A flanking force of seven corvettes warped nearly behind the _Lusus_ , above and past her eight-o-clock, and her escorts before doing an extreme about-face and began peppering the vulnerable engine cowlings of the screening fleet. Longswords packs moved to intercept them, but the maneuver was successful. The engines of the large, human cruiser were damaged to the point that firing the main gun would cause too much reverse thrust to maintain a stable orbit. Too much reverse thrust to keep the ship aimed correctly in general.

"Cole," Osborn leaned over to the comm port next to him, "how much time?"

"One more minute, Ryder," he promptly responded.

Sirens and klaxons in the bridge were blaring. "Hangar bay 2b critical," blinked one monitor in a bright, red font on a black background. Another displayed the damaged point defense weapons- thirty four of forty M910s damaged, twenty seven fully disabled. "Engines at sixty seven percent efficiency," one out-of-place monitor calmly stated with no bright or flashy lights. Another shot, this one right down the barrel of his first MAC. It damaged both firing mechanisms.

The aging flag officer understood inevitability. He'd felt it countless times in the war as alien vessels glassed world after world, but this was different. He took a deep breath. "This is Rear Admiral Ryder," Harvest protocol be damned, "all non-critical personnel, abandon ship." They'd be prisoners of war, but at least they had a chance of living. "You have one minute."

Osborn looked down at the floor, that weathered, beaten floor that he'd stood atop of for three decades of nearly non-stop combat, and then looked up. His bridge officers were all at their posts, still doing their jobs- communicating information to each other, coordinating ship-wide action. Good, solid men and women. He'd gotten lucky.

"Alright, all ahead full. Prepare reactors for overload. Ram whatever ships you can." The magnitude of the acceleration pushed him back into his seat, his head cradled in that familiar faux leather-cladded seat. He looked at the holographic table. It looked like an endless sea of blue-green from that position, like the view from the beach apartment on Emerald Cove he once owned. "I want those Paris-class frigates to warp through the fleet and do an about-face."

"Yes sir, relaying orders!" yelled out his comm officer against the ferocity of the g-forces. He was a nice kid, that one, wedding in a few months.

The three large, green blips representing the screen of Paris-class frigates around the _Lusus_ blinked across the sector map and deployed a volley of archer missiles at the rear of the enemy fleet. The _Lusus_ herself continued her acceleration into the heart of the enemy fleet. Fire poured down upon it, further damaging the superstructure from its blunt-force as the moment the old man had been waiting for finally happened. Two green dots, the _Everest_ and the _Horizon_ , disappeared into the void.

"Open comms, all fleet." Rear Admiral Ryder began as his eyes were glued to the tactical map and his back to the seat from the acceleration of his ship. The damage was extensive, and his reactionless drive was just too badly damaged. Entering hyperspace might work, but exiting it would be deadly. There was only a single course of action left. "Men, it has been an honor. Initiate reactor overload, authorization code 07075-73573-OR. Fire all missiles at distant targets. Pass fire control to the _Red Light_."

"Neural leash challenge accepted," the ship's AI confirmed, "Reactor overload in 10." Ryder smiled. "9." Those bags under his eyes seemed heavier than ever, "8," but the sight of those vanishing red dots couldn't have been more beautiful. "7." He reached into his pocket, "6," and pulled out the picture of his family from before the war. "5." His brother looked so young, peaceful, and unconquerable. "4." His parents looked so wise and calm, like they'd be there forever. "3." His son, just three years old back then, was so full of life. "2." Ryder looked back to his crew with a moue in acceptance. "1." The comms officer smiled and gave a shrug in response.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

Happy holidays, everyone! Before I start the physics lecture portion of the author's notes, I want to cover a couple of things:

Firstly, I want to extend a huge thanks to my beta readers **Amy Grav** and **DragoLord19D**. Y'all rock. They found a lot of mistakes that I missed on my quality check sessions, so thank you so, so much.

Secondly, as always, I love constructive criticism, questions, or just comments, so drop some off in the form of review! This was my first time writing a space battle, so I'm definitely looking for advice on how to do better. Likewise, if you have questions about how some kind of technology or physical effect works, I'll add it in as lengthy author's note lecture in some future chapter. If anyone asks what you're reading, just tell them you're studying.

And finally, a quick aside before we begin: my model for turian/quarian/dextro/levo incompatibility will be that certain proteins that are found in levo food are poisonous. There are examples of this in nature already, with toxins like verotoxin (found in cattle feces, among other places) interfering with protein production. This is definitely an area where my understanding leaves a lot to be desired, so if someone with some kind of degree in the field (Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Medical Physics, Astrobiology, etc) is interested letting me ask questions, bounce ideas, and just generally being a scientific resource, pass me a PM.

In this chapter, we had actual fleet on fleet combat. Both sides employed railguns, coilguns, magnetic accelerator cannons, whatever you want to call them. Reality, scientific fiction, or plain old fantasy? If they're science fiction or reality, how do they work?

We begin with a simple, regular gun, like the kind your boisterous American uncle might own. When a bullet is fired in a gun, the gunpowder in the casing explodes and a wave of pressure from the compressed gasses imparts energy into both the bullet and the gun going in equal and opposite directions. That's why a gun "kicks," a phenomenon known as recoil.

At some point, adding more and more length to a gun barrel won't help speed up a bullet since the gasses will have imparted as much as energy as they could, at which point friction begins to take over to slow the bullet down.

But hold on, what if there was some way to use a longer barrel to continue to speed the bullet up? By having a longer barrel and some way of pushing or pulling a bullet, the longer the barrel, the more you could push it. The more you pushed it, the faster it could go, meaning more kinetic energy and more damage.

The solution is electricity and magnetism. If we could make use of a current and the Lorentz force, we use the idea that electric and magnetic fields can exert force on a charge.

Enter the railgun. If we put two conducting wires around the outside of a specially designed gun barrel and ran current through them, a powerful magnetic field would be produced. This magnetic field then interacts with an already moving, magnetic projectile by exerting yet more force on it! Coilguns are actually a different design entirely and likely what both factions use, but the idea is similar enough that I won't talk about it in detail.

We're going to do some pretty simple math and physics here, but feel free to skip down a bit if you're averse to that kind of thing- I've included the conclusion below.

In the simplest model possible for a railgun, the formula for the force (F) exerted on the projectile is the strength of the magnetic field of the rails (B) times the current (I) and the length of the rails, i.e. the distance the projectile must travel (d) giving us the equation F=BId. We recall from high school that F is mass (m) times acceleration (a).

Let's look at what these variables mean for the workings of our railgun.

First off, mass (m). The heavier your projectile is, the slower your acceleration is. The slower your acceleration, the smaller your final velocity will be upon exiting the railgun.

Secondly, the longer your barrel is (d), the faster your projectile will hustle.

Then, we reach current (I) and magnetic field (B). In this railgun of ours, the magnetic field itself is dependent on current times a constant (B = c*I), so our acceleration is dependent on the current _squared_. In practical terms, better reactors give your gun more oomph.

What we're interested in is calculating the speed, or velocity (v) of the projectile at the time it would leave the barrel of the gun, and its energy (E), so we start by making a broad swathe of assumptions about how everything works- all of the constants to the right side of the force equation- B, I, and d do not vary with time or distance (also completely incorrect), and then we note that your velocity at time t is just acceleration over time: v = a*t + your initial velocity. Assuming the initial velocity of our projectile is 0 with respect to the spaceship, we get an equation that looks like this: v = BIdt/m.

But what about that t (time) standing over there? We can solve for t by noting that the bullet will traverse the length of the gun, d, in at^2. t = sqrt(d/a), then, so t = sqrt(m/BI). Remembering that our magnetic field strength, B, is itself proportional to our current, I, our final equation for v is v = dI/sqrt(m).

We're also interested in energy. v^2 is proportional to I^2d^2/m, so mv^2, or kinetic energy (approximately), is proportional to I^2d^2.

We've come up with a model, so let's play with it a bit. Given my simplistic approximations, let's say I wanted to quadruple the power of my gun by increasing energy by a factor of four. To do that, I'd have to double the length of my barrel or, since I^2 is similar to power (energy per unit time), quadruple the power output of my reactor. We can examine the effect visually by plotting y = x^2. You can just copy that into google and get a plot, actually, so I recommend it.

Since barrel length is such a determinant in energy output, it's no surprise that Citadel Council has stipulated that dreadnoughts are such terrifying weapons of war: railguns scale linearly with reactor output and quadratically with length! This is also why UNSC cruisers are so valuable and orbital defense platforms are the terrors of the skies.

What about bullet mass- what kind of effect does that have? We see in our velocity equation, v is proportional to 1/sqrt(m). Let's graph that: y = 1/sqrt(x). The smaller your mass is, the _way_ higher your initial velocity is!

In the next chapter, we'll talk about bullet material, use these results to compare UNSC and Council gun efficacy, and introduce how the mystical, magical mass effect might work in concert with our railguns and coilguns. A few readers ( **huh** , **KorPA** , **A Reader** , **anotamous** ) had discussed the realism of the space guns presented in this story, so I hope to placate them all with the next chapter!

So back to question 1, reality, science fiction, or plain old fantasy?

The United States military is actively pursuing research in railguns. In fact, in their Dahlgren facility, a functional railgun is actively being worked on. You can find videos on youtube of it blowing stuff up. It's awesome. The problem with it, right now, is that the rails frequently burn out. From a pure, raw power perspective, it's very performant, but from a maintenance perspective, it's not really feasible right now. The rails actually burn out after only a few shots.

Additionally, people have suggested using railguns to ship durable goods like food, fuel, and water by shooting them into orbit and then landing them somewhere. Ideally, this would be cheaper than shipping those same goods by tanker, but so far nothing has panned out.

Final verdict: reality, but bordering on science fiction.


	7. The Meetings

**Primarch Promius Sparatus  
** **Turian Military Command, Palaven,** Trebia System  
 **Council Calendar: Day 14, Year 2657**

Primarch Promius Sparatus walked with haste through the cavernous complex into the bowels of the seat of military power on Palaven. Here, three kilometers underground in the secure bunker, the ceilings were nearly claustrophobic. The walls, all a down-to-business gray with simple red accents, were covered with tapestries of companies, battalions, armies, and fleets throughout Hierarchy history. The founders felt it was imperative that those at the very top never forget from whence they came.

The primarch's omnitool, a type of portable computer with a holographic display ubiquitous throughout known space attached to a forearm, glowed vibrantly on his right hand. A popup titled "high command emergency meeting" from his task manager was clearly visible. Other than the sender, no further information was given.

"Sparatus," yelled someone from behind him, "are you headed to the meeting?"

Sparatus paused to look back, swiped a few floating buttons to hide the note, and gave the admiral in charge of the Hierarchy Intelligence Department the traditional turian salute of his right talon over the heart. "Admiral Paliculus, I am. Why the secrecy?"

Admiral Galvus Paliculus responded with own salute as he caught up. The two continued down the hallway in tandem. "First contact," the admiral responded with a slight shortness of breath, "hostile."

"Another rachni invasion?"

"I don't believe so," Galvus caught up with a deep breath, "but we'll let the facts speak for themselves." The admiral walked slightly ahead to fit through the narrow door. It opened smoothly, red light on the lock turning green, as he strode forward.

The pair arrived at a small conference room with circles arranged in arc in front of the curved walls- holographic projectors for each group in the meeting. In the center, a larger circle rested- the central display. Another turian was already seated in the room. "Ah, welcome," she turned around in her chair, one leg crossed over the other.

Paliculus saluted, "Councillor," before taking his seat.

Sparatus did the same. "Councillor Octados. Why are you not at the citadel?"

"I received word that I am now a great-grandmother," she smiled by raising her mandibles ever so slightly, "so I'm visiting the child."

"Congratulations, Camicia," Primarch Sparatus returned the smile in kind before taking a seat next to her. The aging Councillor had been been a mentor to Promius all his life and the two had remained close. "Right, shall we begin?" Sparatus made his way to a chair as the thick sliding door behind him shut with a heavy thump.

Paliculus moved his forearm slightly, the motion activating the holographic, haptic interface of a computer he, and most others, wore on his wrist- his omnitool. The admiral's overwrought wristwatch picked up the communication consoles and dialed into the meeting. Over a dozen primarchs, admirals, and generals, the entirety of the top of the Turian Hierarchy, shimmered into view as the pedestals connected.

"Thank you for joining us," Paliculus began as a bevy of acknowledgements rang out from the participants, "Primarch Vituvius, would you like to begin?"

"Thank you, Admiral Paliculus," responded a turian with bright red skin and a white colonial tattoo, "yesterday midday, by citadel time, one of my patrol groups had discovered that a dormant mass relay had been activated. In accordance with protocol, they investigated, of course, and discovered that two quarian-owned ships were attempting to reactivate some kind of alien super-dreadnought." Murmurs of shock rippled through the attendees. "Spectral emissions from the ship suggested that the reactor was online but kinetic barriers were not. The combat-capable quarian ship, an old Hylactor-class we had built however many decades ago, had weapons and barriers powered to combat load and pointed at us as our patrol group entered the system. Our fleet captain preemptively defended himself. Unfortunately, the alien dreadnought shredded the patrol group save for a single vessel."

The attendees began arguing immediately before Sparatus yelled out a stern "quiet!" He turned to the holographic projection of Vituvius, "please, continue."

"Thank you, Primarch. The sector fleet was assembled, along with two sensor support cruisers, and we went in to apprehend the renegade Quarians. As we approached the secondary relay in question, however, the remaining quarian freighter and the alien dreadnought exited through that very relay, engines apparently operational." Vituvius sighed, momentarily, before continuing. "The admiral in charge, Legionary Admiral Adorior, ordered communications to be opened but the fugitives immediately resumed hostilities before any such communications could be established. The quarian freighter suicide-bombed into the fleet and the alien ship somehow jumped into FTL _through_ the plane of the solar system-"

"Yes," Admiral Paliculus interrupted, "Hierarchy Intelligence Prime Researcher Suldas should be on the call."

"I'm here, Admiral," another hologram responded.

"Good. His team was tasked with explaining the technical ramifications of the alien ship. For now, please continue."

"So," Primarch Vituvius gathered his thoughts for a moment before resuming, "the fleet pursued the alien ship through yet _another_ unopened relay, primary relay 314. On the other side, we found an alien world with a bunch of other, similarly designed alien ships. The rest is all fighting." Several attendees looked at each other with worried glances as Vituvius continued, "Admiral Paliculus, Researcher Suldas," the primarch announced as he fidgeted with his omnitool, "you were tasked with the combat analysis. I've handed control over to you."

"Thank you, Primarch," responded the admiral of the intelligence agency, "let's move on to the battle recording and overview." Paliculus activated the omnitool on his right hand and pulled up the battle recording. A few additional presses of the holographic buttons and the central projector was displaying an in-system view of the new solar system. "This is the solar system beyond relay three hundred fourteen as the first of the frigates entered. Notice the garden world, here," the admiral pointed, "the position and distance of the relay," as he zoomed out, "the other celestial bodies, this stationary base, and the pair of alien vessels."

Paliculus zoomed in on the base. "First off, this base did not appear to serve a defensive purpose, yet it was in synchronous orbit with the mass relay. We're not sure what it was there for, but we believe it to be a research station."

He then waved his left hand over his right wrist and dragged the display around. "This is the alien ship that we had discovered behind the dormant secondary relay." The admiral rotated the display around the ship, giving all of the attendees a good look at the floating column of gray metal and orange gouts of fire.

"That's very odd design," noted a primarch.

"How is it still moving under its own power with all of that damage?" asked another in a muted tone, rhetorically.

"Note the symbols on this side of the ship," pointed out Admiral Galvus Paliculus, "and the icon itself. On the other side," he rotated the vessel, "the surface is heavily marred, and the icon is not visible, but either the beginning or the end of the same series of glyphs are present. Also note the almost wave-like structure of the ship. We believe this to be some kind of damage from a prior explosion behind the ship, compressing its entire superstructure." Another view focused on the front of the vessel. "These are its _pair_ of main guns. From the relay battle, we can determine that the muzzle velocity of the guns is extremely low compared to ours, but the overall energy output per shot is dramatically larger than our ships."

"How much larger are we talking here?" asked a primarch.

"There's a point in the fleet battle at the relay where it becomes apparent. We'll discuss it then. Speaking of which," the central view zoomed out to the sensor overview of the space. "as we were warping into the system, another ship moved to defend the first one," the display shifted to a simple, white near-rectangular prism with thin, blue exhausts on the back. "This one is closer to a standard cruiser in size. Notice the different color of the armor. That's not paint, that's a different material. Additionally, it's equipped with extremely strong barriers." The view rotated to the side of the ship, minus the front. "We never got a view of the front of the ship, so the VIs couldn't reconstruct its shape. Now, the weapons. Rather than using projectile-based point defenses like the others, this ship used something akin to our GARDIAN lasers in at least effect. And look at the emblem on this ship; it's completely different. We have some hypotheses, but nothing is set in stone.

The primary display zoomed back out. "Continuing forward, initial sensor logs showed only minor amounts of activity in orbit of the planet. Our admiral ordered an initial defensive formation anyway due to the alien FTL mechanisms. We began pursuit of the ships as soon as the fleet was ready, but the aliens had mined the relay with several hundred nuclear warheads." The display showed a field of light appear briefly right near the fleet, causing dozens of green dots to disappear. "Losses were extreme. Moments later, a small fleet jumped in." Red dots suddenly showed up on the screen. "Ten additional belligerent ships in total warped in, plus another three at the far side of the planetoid for a flanking run. The immediate ten contained a heavy dreadnought, three cruisers, and six light cruisers of various designs. The flanking group consisted of three additional cruisers." The central display shifted to a view of the intercepting ten-strong fleet. A variety of different designs were shown clustered together for display purposes- far closer than the distances of the battle.

"Note the logos on these ships." A display zoomed in on a stylized logo of a bird behind a shield with the symbols UNSC across a banner. "While the logo differs in actual shape, the glyphs on this logo are the same as those on the first super-dreadnought. We believe these ships to belong to the same faction. This ship here, the one of the light cruisers, has a different design than the others. Notice the large, sloped armor plates on the front- we've measured them to be about two meters thick, yet the ship maintains a surprising degree of maneuverability. Again, notice the twin cannons on the front of the vessel unique to it and the dreadnoughts. We believe this to be some kind of anti-heavy dreadnought ship, perhaps a foil to ships like the first one we observed."

The members of the meeting were kept in now-rapt attention as the head of intelligence continued the summary. "The enemy ships immediately opened fire to divert our fleet's aggression away from the original alien super-dreadnought. Their opening volley was a combination of projectiles and missiles, both conventional and nuclear. While our ships were largely successful in dodging the rounds from the cruisers, the alien dreadnought rounds did successfully connect with our second dreadnought, the _Claw of Aephus._ The first round sapped its shields and put it into an extremely fast spin. Given the energies involved, we expect the rotational forces alone to have killed everyone onboard. The second shot from the alien dreadnought completely gutted the _Claw_. Each projectile is _thousands_ of times more massive than ours, and each is fired with at least _one hundred times_ as much energy," he emphasized. "As for the missile barrage, the large volume of conventional missiles saturated our GARDIAN lasers and the subsequent nuclear blasts wiped out most of the fighters, along with a handful of our frigates. Future attacks won't be nearly as effective as we've now identified which missiles are conventional and which are not."

Sparatus found himself unconsciously making a chirp of surprise. "Admiral Paliculus, why use projectiles that heavy?"

"A good question, Primarch," Paliculus responded, "the alien ships seem to operate on a completely different set of paradigms to ours. They are incredibly heavily armored, largely barrier-less, and, by virtue of their considerable mass, not particularly maneuverable. Against similarly armored enemies, such a design would be potentially advantageous. Even their smallest cruiser, relatively lightly armored with about sixty centimeters of their armor, stood up to more than thirty seconds of constant barrage from twenty one of ours before succumbing to its wounds."

"Strange. We've been building ships to be as maneuverable as possible. Do you have any ideas why their line of thought has been different?"

The Prime Researcher's hologram shuffled in his seat. "I can answer that, Primarch," he responded. "The working hypothesis that they do not make use of the mass effect in their craft."

Sparatus raised a single mandible. "Do you understand how preposterous that sounds?"

"Of course, but the data supports it. The alien ships are able to warp through mass-heavy environments, like the plane of a solar system. When the alien ships warped in, there was no detectable gravity wave. When the alien ships synchronously fired at the beginning of combat, there was no detectable gravity wave. There was a weaponless base surrounding the system's in-system mass relay, something that could be a research base. Their ships are slow, heavily armored, and only four of them had barriers. It's the simplest explanation we have for their designs."

"Researcher," Sparatus paused to process the man's words before tilting his head in confusion, "how do their ships have kinetic barriers without the mass effect?"

"We do not yet know, Primarch, but impacts from kinetic barriers tend to have certain spectral emissions. These mass effect-less barriers had non-negligible differences in the response behavior."

Admiral Paliculus turned to Sparatus, "Hierarchy Intelligence feels this to be an acceptable working theory, Sparatus. Among every council species, historically, the advent of the mass effect pushed ships to be evasive rather than defensive simply because it was a more effective defense. Without such an impetus, I could easily see an arms race diverging from ours.

"Regardless," the admiral resumed as he turned back to the central monitor, "the battle continued. Three additional cruisers flanked around the planetoid and fired on the port-side of the fleet as some of the cruisers and the dreadnought deployed their own, limited quantity of fighters."

The holographic projector showed the three new ships. Whereas the other cruisers looks almost like guns floating through space, these were more squat, more elegant, more simple, and almost predatory in appearance. Two long, triangular sections sat up front, reminiscent of a vacidain river reptile's maw, with the upper portion housing a menacing barrel. The ship straightened out after to give way to glowing, blue ports on the port and starboard and a squat conning tower on its topside. "Note the fighter bays on either side of this ship- not physical doors but shielded. To add further credence to Researcher Suldas' conclusions, no kinetic barriers we are aware of are capable of sealing atmosphere in like this.

"The alien cruisers came in, fired multiple times in rapid succession to slow their velocity, and formed a wolfpack. Our frigates responded by forming counter-packs to chase the new vessels, preventing them from further damaging our cruisers and dreadnought. Our heavy ships continued firing at the alien central defensive fleet inflicting heavy casualties.

"A minute later, the initial super dreadnought warped out along with the strange white ship. The defensive alien dreadnought launched lifeboats and blew up in the same way that the others did- likely a supercritical reactor overload. While the overload did destroy some of the lifeboats, we did manage to scavenge a few. The boats and their passengers are safely back on Abicolus. Primarch Vituvius has been charged with their well-being until Hierarchy Intelligence can move them to a more secure location. We'll get to the creatures in a moment."

Admiral Paliculus' hands scurried across his omnitool until the central display changed from the barriered alien ships to a large, floating gun. Measurements crawled across the hologram denoting its sizeable width- five hundred by seven hundred meters- and length- over one thousand three hundred meters. Its barrel seemingly took the entirety of that. "This was our last obstacle," resumed the admiral, "two floating defensive platforms around the planet's space elevator."

"Space elevator," queried a primarch, "like in those old science fiction stories?"

"That's right, Primarch," acknowledged Paliculus. "For those of you not aware, a space elevator is a theoretical device used to ferry material to and from a planet's surface. Well, at least it was theoretical. The aliens have been using it to evacuate the local populace. If these aliens truly do not know of the mass effect, moving ships into the gravitational well of a planet would be an extremely energy-intensive task. A space elevator neatly solves that issue.

"Legionary Admiral Adorior ordered the elevator captured intact for future study. The defense platforms next to it posed a problem for our ships, however. When we warped a small number of frigates nearby, its point-defense coilguns proved to be a match for our kinetic barriers, and the main cannons are something else entirely. Each shot was fired at four percent the speed of light, or almost four times faster than our newest dreadnought, and weighs between _one hundred thousand_ and _two hundred thousand times_ as much as one of ours. Each platform is, quite literally, firing heavy corvettes at us. Energy for the weapon was transmitted wirelessly from the ground, though the actual location of the reactors is as of yet unknown to us. The Legionary Admiral neatly handled the situation by using asteroids from the nearby asteroid belt, however. Our soldiers are preparing for pacification as we speak."

Councilor Octados stood up and joined the admiral at a closer examination of the space station. "Is there any danger of such a weapon being placed on a ship?"

"Maybe," Researcher Suldas' scratched his neck before resuming, "the only reason that our ships are the size they are is the exponentially larger amount of element zero required for each extra amount of mass of a ship. If our theory about the lack of element zero in the alien ships is correct, there is no technical limit on the size of their ships save for structural stresses during maneuvering."

"But they have no GARDIAN lasers and seemingly no knowledge of the mass relay network?"

"Only the single white ship has GARDIAN lasers, but otherwise yes, that is correct, Councillor," affirmed Suldas.

"Interesting. Let us examine these aliens, then," the councillor softly demanded as she continued staring at the central display.

The holographic projector responded to her demands moments later as several unclothed bipeds shimmered into existence in from of the group. "These are the aliens, Councilor," elucidated Admiral Paliculus to the congregation. "Like us, the salarians, et cetera, they are sexually dimorphic. The smaller of the two genders, these ones," the display dimmed the aliens not of interest, "are extremely similar in shape to the asari, except the skin color and the follicles on their heads, which are reminiscent of the quarians. Given this opening here," he pointed, "we believe this gender of the alien species gives birth to live young. These other ones are, on the whole, larger, and our VI calculated them to be seven point one percent more aggressive, on average, though both have been proven to be nearly as aggressive as the krogan. Initial attempts to communicate with them have been unsuccessful. None of the aliens respond with anything but the same phrases over and over again, possibly some kind of defense protocol or standard operating procedure in the event of first contact.

"In terms of what is onboard the lifeboats, we discovered a set of armor- unshielded, with plates made of the same material as the external armor of the lifeboat itself- and multiple sets of weapons. All of their weapons are projectile-based. They use a black powder derivative, just like ours did some one thousand years ago. Initial tests suggest it is only marginally more powerful than our final black powder refinement."

"Fascinating!" Councillor Octados circled around the display, examining the naked aliens. "The similarity of the female ones to the asari is, indeed startling!" She moved her mandibles in surprise, thoughts racing through her head. "The aggression is worrisome, however. Admiral Paliculus, do we have any estimates of their naval power? Number of colonies? Anything of the sort?"

"Suldas?" Paliculus passed the question.

"Since there are no other relays in-system, we believe the extent of their controlled space to limited," explicated Prime Researcher Suldas, "and the existence of a space elevator, a major industrial endeavor that would likely only be placed on the most important of colonies placed on such a small colony, supports the hypothesis. It is unclear what kind of response they will have, but multiple of fleets of similar size and composition could and should be expected."

Admiral Paliculus pressed the implied point further. "I would like to point out that Legionary Admiral Adorior's strategy during combat was severely flawed. He should have moved his vessels into knife-fighting range to leverage our superior maneuverability.

Councilor Octados continued to stare at the creatures on the screen. "Could you put the first super dreadnought on the screen? Thank you." She examined the ship, with its strange protrusions, menacing forward-facing double barrels, plethora of point-defense cannons, and cavernous engine depressions with fascination. "These aliens are simple and most certainly new to space. They only recently discovered GARDIAN lasers and barriers, they have no knowledge of the mass effect, and no knowledge of relay network. Their savagery will need to be guided by a steady hand. As a client race under the Hierarchy, they could be capable of great contributions to the galaxy. Who would the commanding general for the invasion be?"

Paliculus answered quickly. "General Desolas Arterius, council-"

Sparatus stood up. "Councillor," he interjected, "we've been making a lot of assumptions about these creatures. We don't know how fast their faster than light drive is, what its range is, and by extension, what their actual industrial capacity is or number of colonies actually stand at. They may not even be willing to be a client race- they may rebel. We may be falling into a trap."

"Then we must fall into it, Sparatus," she countered. "You've read the white power projections. In two thousand years, the galaxy will be a client state of the asari. Through their biology, their soft power will ultimately give them complete control of the council, the citadel, everyone. The hierarchy as we know it will cease to exist as asari culture overtakes turian customs.

"These aliens have evolved on a totally unique axis. They are clearly capable of great feats of collaboration and engineering. By capturing these creatures and their novel technology in their infancy, we can leverage our prestige over the council and, if not prevent the fall of the hierarchy, then at least prolong it. These aliens will fall in line, just as the volus have, or just like the krogan have, for if we fail here then we may very well fall as a species."

The councilor paused as continued to glare at the projected ship. "Admiral Paliculus, do what you need to do to translate their language." The admiral nodded. "Primarch Vituvius, keep me apprised of any updates on the ground and recommend to Admiral Adorior and General Arterius that they cut off civilian evacuation through the space elevator. The hastatim will have an easier time of pacification with more non-combatants. Primarch Bellatus, you will send your excess fighter craft to Primarch Vituvius who will, in turn, send them to the front. You have your orders, everyone. Dismissed." The councilor turned around and walked out of the room, the admiral of the intelligence service following her lead a few seconds later.

Various holograms shimmered out of existence as the assorted primarchs and admirals in attendance logged out. Sparatus continued to stare at the now empty pedestals wondering what the Hierarchy had just gotten itself into.

* * *

 **Captain Michael Sullivan  
** **HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6, Sydney, Earth,** Sol System  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 4, 2561**

"Human Soft Power and Long Term Reconciliation," began the ONI white paper. Michael glanced over the abstract- "given no major changes, the Swords of Sanghelios will become a natural client state of the UEG within 200 to 250 years," summarized the authors.

Michael closed the file. "Not exactly relevant anymore, is it," he asked rhetorically.

"It's very relevant," countered Admiral Serin Osman in her ever deliberate tone. She turned her chair to face Michael. Her brown eyes, hard features, and icy stare advertised a fearsome intelligence wielded by a fearsome person. Even seated at a desk, she towered above anyone in a room. "Operation Truth And Reconciliation was a master stroke, Michael. The sangheili and humanity have never been closer. That's why you're here." Praise from the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence was something few people ever experienced. Michael let a small smile reach his lips. "We'll need to see if the arrival of these new actors, this 'Turian Hierarchy,' can benefit that in some way."

Michael nodded slightly, then took another sip of his coffee. The fruity notes of the Ethiopian yirgacheffe warmed his throat and gave him a moment to compose a reply as the caffeine coursed through his veins. He gently placed the cup down on a rounded coaster on Admiral Osman's transparent aluminum desk. "We got lucky here- hostile first contacts attacking both Shanxi and the _Horizon_ works to our benefit. The sangheili are always receptive to throwing themselves on their sword." A few gears turned in the captain's head. "We'll need to be quick, though. The Arbiter needs to hear about the attack from the UNSC and not his intelligence network. Sangheili honor has always been about being as blunt as possible. After the bonds forged from the Jiralhanae Pacification Campaign, I suspect he'll offer military assistance and then we'll need to accept it. I'll check with Sanbhal on some updated projections after whatever Operation Hypodermic sequel we do with the Turians, of course."

"Do it." Serin turned back to the right, lifted a datapad, and scanned its text as she continued speaking. "You've had a chance to read over the report compiled by the _Everest's_ AI, right?"

"Of course." Sullivan smiled a broad smile. "I'm excited just thinking of the possibilities, though elements of the report are worrying if ONI doesn't find a way to get on top of them."

Serin moved her pad down, and craned her head back. "Dominating the citadel council is a possible solution, but another is merely to increase military build up by both sides to record levels."

"A cold war? What would that bring us?"

"I'll read you into it after the meeting." Serin stood up and pushed her chair back with the back of her legs. "Let's go." Her enormous height, nearly two full meters, and, by extension, lengthy gait propelled her at a brisk pace past Captain Sullivan. The captain stowed his pen atop his right ear, grabbed a small stack of papers, and followed his commander. She exited out of the office to two saluting marines standing in a drab gray hallway and pulled a left.

Michael followed his superior through the extensive hallways of the Bravo-6 bunker, examining the pre-war architecture in all of its imposing, brutalist glory. Massive ceilings this far underground harkened back to a time of plenty from a now distant past. The pair made a right turn, past a pair of guards, then a left turn past an open meeting room, and into the main hallway towards the security council chamber.

Past yet another layer of guarded doors, inside of the waiting room to the security council chamber, on the wall next to the imposing council door hung a famous painting. A recreation of the original still hung in the lobby of the ground floor. A menacing, turbulent black background with dim, smeared pinpricks of light was set as the backdrop to a battered and bruised, yet defiant and unyielding Valiant-class heavy cruiser. The ship was firing off-painting into covenant ships. Purple chips, presumably from Covenant vessels, littered the outer edges of the piece. On a golden plaque atop a genuine, oaken frame, the words "Admiral Cole's Last Stand, Psi Serpentis, 18 April 2543" were inlaid.

Serin looked at it briefly before moving past the security officers and into the chamber.

Michael followed. The chamber itself had a large, U-shaped table with massive, vaulted ceilings at least seven meters tall. On the floor was the redesigned eagle bearing a golden shield atop a globe, the letters "UNSC" atop the shield and a golden banner reading "United Nations Space Command" above the globe. The bird looked ready to leap into the air, like a phoenix awakening from a long slumber. Inside sat the people at the very highest levels of government and military.

On the far left was General Nicolas Straus, head of the UNSC Army. A dour man of Germanic descent, he had close-cropped, black hair and black eyes atop his gaunt, modestly-wrinkled face. In the year and a half that the captain had known the general, Sullivan couldn't recall a time when Strauss had been seen outside of his pair of worn, olive green army armor. As befitting a man who was never late to anything, Strauss had arrived to the room early and was examining his cuticles out of sheer boredom.

As Michael stood in the room, finding his place, a motorized wheelchair strolled past him. The man sitting in it was Spartan Musa-096, a would-be Spartan II-series supersolder whose augmentations didn't take, and now de facto leader of the Spartan branch of the military. Prior to the formation of the Spartan branch in '53, he was a Rear Admiral for the Navy. His arms were in repose on the armrests at either side and his face deep in whatever thoughts consumed him as his neural lace commanded his chair's movements. The chair made a mechanical whirring as it guided him to his place at the security council table. The pale, white man glared at Michael with his piercing, brown eyes that belied a wisdom beyond his years. His thin face was topped with curly, brown hair and sat atop his thin but defined neck. Michael had always found it interesting that Admiral Osman and him were close, but details were, like all of his boss' past, shrouded in secrecy, and the captain knew better than to pry.

Next came the legendary Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood of the UNSC Navy. He was bald, though not by choice, and tall: a sliver under two meters. The british nobleman was already seated at his well-worn chair in his standard naval dress whites, reading whatever new report came across his desk. Even in his now advanced age, the eighty-year old never seemed to tire of his role and responsibility as de facto leader of all of the UNSC.

Admiral Osman sat on her chair, shoulders square and attentive, eyes scanning everyone and everything with vigilance. After working under her for a year, and letting go of the near-constant state of fear of working under the most dangerous being in the UNSC, Michael found his most common emotion was surprise- be it from unorthodox strategy or ethically questionable situations even for a die-hard such as himself- he was almost never bored. The one time the captain was, he had tried to find information on Osman's previous secretary only to find his email inbox entirely deleted, save for a single email that informed him to stop prying. The fear came back a bit that day.

General Hogan, head of the UNSC marines, had already been seated right of Osman. He was a large, heavyset man, with thick, silver hair and amber eyes. Numerous wrinkles graced his now aged face. The man was friendly, outgoing, and generally gregarious, though he was noted as being a ruthless commander when he was stationed at the front. Michael had once been invited to General Hogan's home in Tehran for a barbeque three months ago. There, the general explained in detail his current incarnation of the perfect hamburger. Hogan constantly experimented with new and bizarre ingredients, and while he was physically fit, his experimentation ultimately led to the accrual of an additional chin no matter his exercise regiment.

The last military man to sit down was General Reginald Dellert, leader of the UNSC Air Force. He was a man of chinese, korean, and texan descent who spent his entire civilian life in the New Texan Republic, on the outskirts of Austin. His balding, black hair was thick with lines of gray. His thin, black eyes always looked heavy on his thin, but muscular frame. The man had once spoke in a heavy southern north american drawl about his beloved 'Buck' being killed at the battle of earth. Michael had learned that 'Buck' was not his horse, but his grandson, at Hogan's barbeque.

The last person to walk in was President Ruth Charet. She was above average in height- one point seven, maybe one point eight meters tall- and had short, gray hair. She sat down next to Dellert at the far right of the council table. Michael had always found it odd that Charet wore glasses over her blue eyes, preferring not to get cloned replacements, even though they were easily available.

Fleet Admiral Hood looked up Michael. "You look lost, son. First time?"

Sullivan smiled back. "Yes sir."

"Grab a chair from the corner over there and place yourself front and center," came the Fleet Admiral's reply.

Captain Sullivan thanked Lord Hood, pulled a chair over, and remained standing. "Let's begin?" Several members acknowledged the request and the room quieted down. Michael cleared his throat, centered himself, and turned his datapad's display on. "A few minutes past twenty three hundred hours," he looked at each of the people present in the room as he talked, "on the thirty sixth anniversary of our last first contact, our colony Shanxi was attacked by a hostile alien force. The artifact that we found three years ago, the one that Oni's Boulder base orbited, turned out to be some kind of gate to another section of the galaxy. Harvest Protocol was initiated and the UNSC has assumed control of the civilian government." The president moved uncomfortably in her chair. "Martial law is under effect across our space."

Hood immediately asked the obvious question. "Is this another forerunner artifact that they left laying about?"

"No, sir," Sullivan responded with air of deference, "the whole milky way is littered with them, apparently, except our corner of space. We're not sure why, yet.

"Regardless, the short form is that Vice Admiral Preston Cole apparently made contact with another race, the 'quarians,' who helped repair his ship. Then, another group of aliens, the 'turians,' found the two, opened fire, and only Cole's _Everest_ escaped. He jumped through a series of these gates and just so happened to have found his way into Shanxi's orbit.

"There, the _Everest's_ AI used its tight-beam laser to give us a series of documents known as the 'codex,' a kind of alien encyclopedia." Sullivan couldn't help but smile a bit as he continued, "we know almost everything about these attackers- culture, general technology, government, but they likely know next to nothing about us, so where shall I begin?"

Gears started turning in everyone's head as they began to formulate avenues of questioning. President Charet asked first, however. "What is the turian government like? What are their citizens like? What kind of species are we dealing with here?"

"That's a complicated one, Madame President," Captain Sullivan responded as he pulled up his datapad, "the turian hierarchy is a hierarchical meritocracy," he began to read from the translated codex file, "with twenty-seven levels of citizenship spread across some large number of actual positions. Someone known as the councillor is the leader of the hierarchy, with primarchs ruling over colony clusters and handling top-level administrative and a few military duties. Their government is also their military, much like the UNSC was during the great war. The government itself is rather laissez-faire in handling its citizens so long as those citizens do their duty.

"The citizenry itself is generally militant, stoic, and disciplined. A close analogy might be some kind of alien Roman Empire. They have a client race- the Volus- and everything." Michael frowned for a moment as he clicked a button on his pad, "but this brings me to another wrinkle. The citadel council is an interspecies hegemony of which the turians are a part of."

"There are three species at the top of the hegemony- the turians, the salarians, and the asari. The turians are more military-minded, the salarians are more interested in intelligence and scientific endeavors, and the asari are diplomatically focused. They effectively rule over a number of other species," he scrolled down a bit, "the drell, the elcor, the hanar, the volus, the batarians, and the keepers: nine species in total. Other species live outside of their purview- the geth, the krogan, the vorcha, the collectors, the yahg, and the quarians. One non-council species, the rachni, was exterminated, and another, the krogan, will soon join them through a council-induced plague." The members of the security council all leaned in a bit closer at those last two.

"In general, the asari are the leaders amongst the leaders. They're long-lived- a thousand years- and tend to take a long view of things. They appear to advocate for peace and shy away from conflict, supposedly. Interestingly enough, they're a mono-gendered species and look remarkably like human females." Sullivan pressed a few buttons to and sent the image of the alien wirelessly to the other members of room. The creature had blue skin and tendrils of some form in place of hair but was otherwise identical in form to a human female.

"Damn," General Hogan grinned. Strauss chuckled in response.

"These creatures can be reasoned with," Admiral Osman intervened to steer the conversation back on track. "Wiping out the turian fleet and issuing a strong counterattack would force the asari to put the turians at the negotiating table. We'd have a strong upper-hand here in any discussions- we were attacked and we defended ourselves thinking we were the subject of yet another alien invasion."

"That seems reasonable," President Charet consented.

Admiral Hood cleared his throat, "What are the chances that this backfires on us, Serin?"

Serin turned to the aged Fleet Admiral, "Extremely low, and if all else fails, we can go for the throat and deploy NOVA bombs on their population centers. We have a prowler in orbit around Shanxi and they haven't detected it, so that'll be our delivery mechanism. We already have the location of all of their publically available planets, including their homeworld. There's no reason the plan wouldn't work that I can think of."

President Charet's eyes widened a bit. "We still make those?"

As the now secretary to Admiral Serin Osman, Captain Michael Sullivan had once read a report on the topic. The bomb was a creation of wanton destruction, a nuclear weapon powerful enough to be capable of cracking open a planet's crust. Its only known activation was when a covenant fleet had accidentally detonated one in their care, destroying a little over three hundred ships, vaporizing a nearby moon, and irradiating a nearby planet, wiping it of all life. The only survivors were the handful of ships orbiting the world in the umbra of the blast.

"Why would we have ever stopped?" Serin answered incredulously, "the first one was a resounding success."

"The fight," Hood changed the topic, "thank you for marking the report for me, Captain. Your team did a good job."

Sullivan let his smile grow a little larger for a brief moment. "Yes sir."

"I assume you've all read the naval combat summary forwarded from Shanxi. The alien ships operate on a completely different axis than ours," Lord Hood explained. "Our ships hit like a truck compared to theirs, but they can run circles around us. They came in with over four hundred ships, but not a single one even hit cruiser weight, and each one makes our Piranha-class fast attack corvettes look as maneuverable as a quadriplegic. We've been building ships to break apart five kilometer-long Covenant capital ships and our designs reflect that- by comparison, our ships are slow and plodding but when we hit, we turn theirs into space dust."

Hood looked at his pad, scrolled down a bit further, scanned a few lines, and looked back up. "Our only truly effective offensive option are the super MACs. The orbital defense platforms performed better than expected, so ship-mounted ones should work well when we take the fight to them. Given the differences in capabilities, the alien admiral should have moved his ships into extreme close-range to press his advantage. I don't think he'll make the same mistake again.

"Possibly minor note, slipspace-wise, we," Hood looked towards Admiral Osman for a moment, "believe we have them beat. When these aliens ships chased the _Everest_ , they had to execute two jumps- one over the system plane and another back towards Cole. Whatever they're using for FTL, it's somehow dependent on the amount of stuff in real space. That gave him time. At bare minimum, our drives don't have that drawback."

"Besides getting some lighter MAC rounds for the ships- I'll talk to logistics and operations about quickly rearming our ships after this- the natural foil to this strategy is our fighters. They get in close and we'll punish them for it. The report showed no mention of dedicated carriers, and neither did this 'codex' of theirs. That's our ace in the hole. Second fleet's Punic-class supercarrier, as well as their Vindication-class battleships are undergoing retrofits right now above Partition. It'll be a week until that's done, then second and fourth fleet will be tasked with the reclamation of Shanxi."

"Both fleets?" asked the president.

"Disproportionate response," Hood deadpanned.

"Woah, what about our boys on the ground," warbled General Dellert. "While the navy's busy putting toys on its ships, the army and airforce are getting pounded. Men and women are going to die because you're twiddling your thumbs."

Hood never got visibly angry, but his eyes squinted ever so slightly. "This strategy will save the greatest number of lives," he said in an infinitesimally deeper a tone, "and material. Spartans can be deployed to lighten the load. Musa-"

Spartan Musa-096 immediately picked up on Hood's train of thought. "Yes, we can augment existing ground forces using Spartan fireteams by way of long range stealth drop pods launched from slipspace. It's been done before. We'll need ships-"

"For deployment, yes," Hood completed the thought. "You'll have them. Now, assuming we succeed at reclaiming Shanxi, first fleet will take whatever additional ships it needs from second and fourth and begin an counterattack at some colony. We'll figure out the specifics later."

Dr. Charet rubbed her temple slightly, "We still have loose ends. Our own aliens, plus Cole, and his new alien friends."

"ONI recommends immediately informing the sangheili of the development." Osman criss-crossed her fingers together above the table as she talked. "They're blunt and care about transparency, plus they'll hear about the incident regardless. Better if it's from us. This is an easy win."

Fleet Admiral Hood nodded. "Agreed. I'll call. The Arbiter and I have a rapport."

"And Admiral Cole," prodded the President, "and the friendly aliens he met. What does this codex say about them?"

"Umm," Captain Sullivan reached into his mind and tried to remember a word he had heard for the first time twenty minutes ago. "Quarians. Yes, the quarians." He pulled up his datapad, and began typing the word in. "They're a nomadic race. About three hundred years ago," he pressed send on his datapad, beaming the information to the others in the room, "the artificial intelligence network they made tried to take over their colonies. The quarians fought back, but were nearly destroyed, so they fled. Rather than helping, this 'council,' who banned the creation of artificial intelligence, sentenced them to exile from any and all colonies, and the council itself."

"Brutal," said Dellert quietly.

Sullivan flipped a little further down the page. "They're considered some of the best engineers in the galaxy. During their exodus from the worlds, they constructed their own _Infinity_ -like projects out in space, except they made ships for growing food rather than fighting wars. In fact, the _Everest's_ AI made a note here that Cole felt a level of kinship with the quarians." He paused for a bit to collect his thoughts. "Beyond that, they helped the _Everest_ get back online- raw materials and the like to fix their destroyed engines and slipspace drives."

"They sound like valuable allies," Charet concluded.

"Says here they're also galactic pariahs," countered General Strauss. "If we ally ourselves with the quarians, we'll receive flak for it. By even talking to them, we could be weakening our position."

Admiral Serin Osman turned to the wiry man. "While true, ONI believes that repaying them materially is the correct diplomatic move. Equitable trade and repayment of debts is smiled upon by every council species." She turned to Fleet Admiral Hood and President Charet. "My recommendation is that the _Infinity_ be sent as a diplomatic envoy. Cole did release the existence of the Covenant to the quarians, so depending on the outcome of your talk, we may want to consider the _Horizon_ either in lieu of the tenth ventral escort frigate or as an eleventh, external escort."

"Why the _Infinity_?" asked Hood, "I'd prefer to have her for the action."

"The Quarians are a race of space nomads- their ships are their homes. The _Infinity_ sends a few messages. Firstly," Osman raised her pointer finger, "regardless of what Admiral Cole told these aliens, we're bigger, better, and stronger than they are," followed by her middle finger, "and secondly, despite our obvious superiority, we value their assistance and friendship. Think of it as putting our best foot forward. If things get too exciting at home, we can always recall her quickly."

Lord Hood glared back at Osman, measuring her unmeasurable response for a few moments. "Alright, you'll have her for the duration of this op. Who's our diplomat?"

President Charet's eyes lit up. "I have someone who would be perfect."

"Who, and why?" asked Serin.

"Anita Goyle. She's our softest touch. That may not work well with the sangheili, but she'll be perfect for these quarians."

Admiral Osman ruminated on the idea for a few moments as the President looked to her for approval. "An interesting choice. ONI's representative will be Captain Michael Sullivan."

Michael's smile got just a little larger. "Yes, sir," he affirmed. He had long ago learned how to maintain his jovial exterior in spite of however nervous he felt internally.

"Serin," Hood spoke up as he continued looking over the battle summary, "during the battle, Ryder ordered a general evacuation of his ship. Did any lifeboats survive?"

"A few. We've already begun search and recovery efforts. We won't have any loose ends, Fleet Admiral."

"Good." Lord Hood looked up and turned to look at Serin for a few moments. "Try your best to bring them back alive." Serin nodded an affirmative.

"Right," Sullivan found his place in his executive summary, "so moving on, 'element zero' is some kind of apparently naturally occurring meta-material that alters mass locally in a region when an electrical current is applied. It forms the basis of almost all of their technology and has a couple of interesting technical repercussions. It's apparently ubiquitous throughout their territory. We've been working and refining theories that seek to explain relative galactic abundance of materials for over five hundred years. The total lack of this 'element zero' in our territory is completely anomalous."

"Interesting," President Charet said quietly. The others, Admiral Osman included, sat and listened quietly.

"Generally, this 'element zero' is used to lighten the weight of their ships to improve maneuverability, to increase the mass of their projectiles while magnetically accelerating them through their barrels, and to provide a type of shielding called a 'kinetic barrier.' On the ground," Sullivan turned to the various generals, "the material allows them to provide shielding to every single ground troop. It's also used in their ground weapons by firing extremely small projectiles at extreme speeds."

"That doesn't make sense to me," commented Charet, "why shoot faster on the ground? Faster speed means more air resistance. And it's not like soldiers can dodge a bullet."

"Stress," responded Dellert, following the aliens' train of thought, "or force per area. Possibly harder for their armor and shields to stop.

Strauss was thinking along a different line. "The amount of energy that can be put into each shot is way higher while maintaining the same amount of recoil. Classic bullet weight versus powder argument. Does ONI know what it'll do to army and marine armor?" asked General Strauss to Admiral Osman.

"No-," began the head of the intelligence agency.

"-but the army is going to find out," Strauss, the head of the army, finished with resignation and disappointment.

Hoot sat up in his chair. "Cut the shit, General. We've done this song and dance countless times during the great war and we'll do it again we have to. Please, continue captain."

"Sir," Sullivan nodded an acknowledgment, "additionally, some aliens develop special abilities involving element zero," Sullivan explained, ignoring the general's outburst. "They're called biotics. They can manipulate objects seemingly telepathically, lower their mass to run faster, and create repulsive fields around themselves that function as a second shield."

Strauss' eyes opened at that one. "So, what, my boys are fighting the jedi?"

Musa cleared his throat before speaking. "How many of these biotics are there?"

"It's species-dependent," responded Michael. "Every single asari is a biotic while very few turians are. For the Turian military, those that are placed in specialist ground units known as a 'cabal.' It all depends on in-vitro exposure to this 'element zero.'"

"Clustering is good," explained Musa as he turned his head to General Strauss, "Depending on numbers, spartan fireteams can counteract these 'cabals.' Regular troop exposure will hopefully be as limited as possible."

General Nicolas Strauss grimaced, then nodded in acceptance. "I can work with that. Anything else," he asked as he looked to Captain Sullivan.

Sullivan looked down at his pad. "Just one: the food situation. Both turians, the race invading us, and quarians, the supposedly friendly race, have an issue with most kinds of food we eat due to some evolutionary circumstances. These turians are going to have supply chain problems."

"So we use prowlers to harass their supply ships?" asked Dellert.

Osman disapproved. "That'd be giving away a distinct advantage. We'll use their supply chain to find the lifeboats from the _Lusus_ and destroy their ability to wage war."

President Charet leaned forward on the U-shaped council table, palms resting on the table's edge as she looked at the head of intelligence. "Are we really preparing for total war, Admiral?"

"Intelligence shows the turians to be a completely militaristic society," Osman explained. "Their military is also their government. While it is likely that this citadel council will attempt to prevent total war, the possibility exists that they will not. I think we'd all like to prevent another Harvest campaign if we can avoid it."

The Harvest campaign quote made Lord Hood visibly wince. "Admiral Osman's assertion is correct," he stated, "Retrospective counterfactuals show that we could have prolonged the fall of Reach by close to five years if we had correctly geared up for total war back in '25 when our industrial capacity was its peak. The delay could have prevented the fall entirely, nevermind the Battle of Earth."

Charet leaned back. "Alright," she resigned, "so it goes. Osman, after this, let's talk about the other aliens offline."

"Of course," Admiral Osman smiled gently, "Captain Sullivan, could you please elaborate on these krogan and rachni aliens that you had mentioned?"

"Of course, ma'am." Sullivan hit a few buttons on his pad's screen to get to the relevant page of the codex. "I had mentioned that the council had exterminated a race and effectively exterminated another earlier. The first, the rachni, was some kind of hive-mind insectoid race. About two thousand years ago, another race, the 'salarians,' were exploring the relay network and stumbled upon the rachni homeworld. The rachni in-system ships captured the salarian vessel and reverse engineered faster than light travel from it. From there, they expanded rapidly and aggressively ushering in an era known as the rachni wars.

"Communication with these rachni was seemingly impossible. The still nascent council races were being pushed back until they found an equally hardy and hostile race, the krogan, and uplifted them to function as their soldiers."

"Gee, that doesn't sound like it could blow up in their face," quipped Dellert.

Sullivan chuckled. "Right? Well, three hundred years after discovering the rachni and two hundred years after uplifting the krogan, the council nuked the rachni homeworld into a radioactive wasteland.

"So, as General Dellert pointed out, over time, the krogan wanted more and more territory until their aggressive expansion turned into yet another war. The council had then-recently discovered a race known as the 'turians,' a militaristic but disciplined culture that we are already duly familiar with. The Turians were offered council membership as equals in exchange for fighting the krogan as the main force. Krogan reproduced extremely quickly, faster than the council could kill them. Ultimately, the salarians developed a plague known as the 'genophage,' which caused the krogan to miscarry most of their clutch, and the turians deployed it on their homeworld, and effectively ended the war. The entirety of the krogan is effectively sterile and their civilization has been on a precipitous decline since the end of the war."

"Brilliant!" exclaimed General Hogan as he looked at Osman. "There's no way ONI didn't try something like that during the war." Osman's expression didn't budge a millimeter.

Rather than waiting for any kind of response that would never come from Osman, Sullivan just continued. "That was about four hundred years ago. There hasn't been a major war since then." Sullivan put his datapad down and looked up for the next question. "Anything else?"

The various security council members looked around for the next question. When none came, Osman stood up. "Good, that concludes the meeting. ONI will keep you all apprised of any updates. Now, we all have a war to prepare for."

The other members followed the intelligence head's lead and began walking towards the door, small discussions forming. President Charet made a beeline for Osman and Captain Michael Sullivan followed suit.

"So what are your initial thoughts on the politics of alliances with these various aliens," inquired Charet. An open-ended question would require more than an empty response from the intelligence head.

"There's no reason to open or close any doors at just yet, Madame President. Let's judge the galactic reception before making any decisions." Osman did her best to disarm the president with a feeble attempt at a warm smile.

Charet crossed her arms across her chest. "A solid non-answer, Admiral Osman. Care to elaborate?"

"Not particularly. You have as much information as I do at this point."

"Well, keep me updated on your thoughts, Osman."

"Absolutely, Madame President." Seemingly satisfied, Charet lowered her arms, picked up her datapad, and left the conference room. Osman turned to Sullivan, the only remaining person in the room. "A fine job, Captain."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Three things- first, you spent too much time looking down at your datapad. Eyes up, back straight. You'll appear more confident that way."

"Apologies, ma'am."

"None necessary. Just constructive criticism. Secondly, please forward any information you have about biotics and element zero to Doctor Catherine Halsey and myself."

Captain Sullivan nodded gently as he put the implications of the request aside. "Consider it done, ma'am."

"And lastly, gather your belongings. You're due on the _Infinity_ at twenty-three hundred, sharp. I understand that you know her commanding officer?"

Captain Sullivan smiled. "Yes, ma'am. Rear Admiral Lasky and I both attended the Corbulo Academy of Military Science back in '26, though neither of us graduated. Covenant attack destroyed all of the printers for the diplomas."

"Good. I'll see you back here in a few weeks." Osman began to turn away before she sarcastically added, "enjoy your vacation."

Sullivan saluted. "Best of luck managing without your dutiful assistant, Admiral." He grabbed his datapad off of his desk, began collecting all of the requested codex entries, and walked out of the room.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! Updates are slow, but I don't have a lot of extra time to dedicate to this story (or much of anything else for that matter), so this is the update speed that readers can expect: once per month, maybe less. As always, I'm interested in constructive criticism about my writing. Additionally, I'm looking for beta readers to proofread my work before release. Let me know if you're interested!

I never really bought into the idea that citadel councilors or politicians are inept. I think having rational actors for a story makes it more convincing and less overtly "HFY." Naturally, everyone has some degree of cognitive dissonance, bias, preconception, and approaches towards risk management. Hopefully, by discussing their positions with their peers, my characters reflect that, but not without making them cartoons. By looking at the circumstances leading up to first contact war from the Turian perspective, I hope to say that the turians are not idiots but merely cut from a different cloth than humans.

With that out of the way, space guns. Last chapter, I promised a continuation. For the remainder of the chapter, we'll use the following notation

 _\- m_ for mass  
 _\- v_ for velocity  
 _-_ _a_ for acceleration  
 _-_ _p_ for momentum ( _p=mv_ )  
 _-_ _K_ for kinetic energy ( _K = 0.5mv^2)  
_ _-_ _U_ for potential energy  
 _-_ _E_ for total energy in a system ( _E = K + U_ ). Often expressed in units of Joules (J).  
 _-_ _c_ for the speed of light; ex: 1.1% the speed of light is 0.01c.  
\- Scientific notation for expressing particularly large numbers. Ex: the number 5000 can be expressed as 5*10^3, or in scientific notation, 5e3. Ex: 0.01c is 1.1e-2.

In the intervening time since _The Fight_ and this chapter, numerous inquiries about recoil have popped up. There were a lot of great questions around the topic and I didn't broach the issue with nearly as much depth as it deserved previously so we'll rectify that oversight of mine first.

In the classical approximation, momentum ( _p_ ) is simply mass ( _m_ ) times velocity ( _v_ ), or _p=mv_. Whether it's a bird, a plane, a speeding bullet, or 1.5 kilometer long spaceship hurtling through space, depending on their velocity relative to you, they have momentum. If you are traveling with the projectile in question, your velocity relative to it is _0_ , so _p=mv=m*0=0_. No momentum! Once your relative speed or the speed of the other object changes, there is a difference in momentum.

For example, when you're driving your car next to another car at the same speed on the highway, your momentum relative to each other is 0. If you drive your car into, say, some poor chap on the sidewalk, from the perspective of the poor chap, your car's momentum is really high ( _m*v=p_ , where m is the mass of your car and v is the car's velocity relative to the chap). From your perspective, the difference in velocity of the chap and you is 0 but the chap has much less mass (like, 80 kg). Now, on Earth, we usually look at the earth as a frame of reference, but in space, there is no such thing- there's no fencepost that someone can use to ground their speeds to a galactic standard or anything. Everything is done in relativism. Let's take that and apply it to something even more violent.

Recoil can be summarized as this: Newton is a tough son of a bitch no matter where he is, be it on the ground or in space. For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. In a closed system, _p_before = p_after_! Momentum of all kinds is what's known as a "conserved quantity," and understanding how laws of conservation function is one of the keys to achieving a better understanding of how the natural world works.

We mentioned a boisterous, gun-toting American uncle in the last chapter. Let's look at how momentum works with that gun of his. Hint: the answers are in the previous paragraphs!

Uncle is standing at the firing range, pistol in hand, bullet chambered. What is the sum of all of the momentum in the system, from the uncle's perspective?

In the infinitesimally small split second after the bullet has fired, what is the momentum of the gun, _p_gun_ , in terms of the momentum of the bullet, _p_bullet_? Additionally, what is the sum of all of the momentum in the system as the bullet is fired, from the uncle's perspective?

For the first question, the answer is _0_. The bullet is standing still ( _v_bullet=0_ , so _p_bullet=0_ ) as is the your uncle.

For the second, the answer is _p_gun = -1 * p_bullet_. Remember, _p_before = p_after_ , so if your bullet is going one direction, your gun will go in the other direction. Now, the gun is heck of a lot heavier than than the bullet, right, but _m_gun * v_gun = m_bullet * v_bullet_. The second part of the question has already been answered: _p_before = p_after_ , and _p_before = 0_ , so _p_after = 0_!

A bullet is dangerous not because it has some enormous amount of momentum- American uncle just held that amount of momentum in hands, right?- but because the bullet places a large amount of stress on a target (force per unit area), piercing skin, and damaging the fragile organs underneath. The uncle dissipated his portion of the momentum by standing on the ground, expending energy to hold the gun back, etc, and the bullet dissipated that momentum by impacting on a target down the range.

But what about the kinetic energy, _K_ , of the bullet? Remember that _K_ is proportional to _m * v^2_ , so the bullet takes much more of the energy from the gunpowder explosion than the gun itself does.

Let's take this idea of conservation of momentum, throw it in our railgun from the previous chapter, and put it into space. A good railgun will move a bullet from a momentum of _p=0_ to a momentum of very deadly (an approximate quantity), so by the law of conservation of momentum, the railgun and its attached components (such as a spaceship) will get equal parts momentum in return. Here, _p_bullet = p_spaceship_ , but the mass of our spaceship is just much, much more than the mass of the bullet, so the spaceship goes relatively slowly in the opposite direction.

The only difference between magnetically accelerated projectiles versus powder accelerated ones is the mechanism by which the change in momentum is achieved (using electromagnetism to pull a projectile forward instead of exploding a substance to push the projectile forward), but since a change in momentum occurs, the spaceship _must_ _necessarily_ feel a change in momentum of equivalent magnitude in the opposite direction. They don't call them Newton's _laws_ for nothing!

It's up the the job of the spaceship's main engines to counteract that change in momentum by pushing in the opposite direction, so if a spaceship's main engines are disabled, firing its main gun may cause all sorts of complications, such as orbital decay. Note that momentum ( _p_ ) is conserved because velocity ( _v_ ) has a direction (forwards and backwards in this case), but a heavy spaceship does not feel the same amount of energy in reverse, since kinetic energy, _K = 0.5 * m * v^2_. In fact, a spaceship must expend an amount of additional energy equal to _K_spaceship = K_bullet * (m_bullet / m_spaceship)_ to counteract the change in momentum imparted from firing the bullet. Notice the ( _m_bullet / m_spaceship_ ) factor; if your spaceship weighs a thousand times as much as your bullet, you have to spend an additional 1/1000ths of your bullet energy to keep your orbit stable. Depending on the energies involved, that may very well still be a huge amount! Note that in the following paragraphs, we simplify our equations by treating our spaceship as fixed in space (and therefore ignoring recoil) but we are going to be off by a non-negligible amount.

With recoil out of the way, let's crunch numbers on the UNSC ships. In Halo: Reach (the book), the author states, " _a standard frigate-mounted magnetic accelerator cannon averages at 183 feet and fires a 600 ton ferric-tungsten projectile with a depleted uranium core at 30,000 meters per second._ " A quick aside: this is almost certainly a mistake by the author since a Halberd-class destroyer supposedly weighs 7900 metric tons (itself also likely a mistake), but we'll use the numbers presented for the duration of this discussion and pretend they aren't apocryphal.

We recall that the kinetic energy ( _K_ ) of an object with mass _m_ moving at a constant velocity of _v_ is _K = 0.5 * m * v^2._ Assuming 'tons' refers to metric tons ( _1 metric ton = 1000 kilograms_ ), a fully powered-up shot from a run of the mill frigate at the time of Halo: Reach contained 2.7e14 Joules of energy. For reference, the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II released approximately 6.3e13 Joules. A run of the mill frigate can deal just a little more than four times as much energy _every single time its gun fires at full power_.

Using our railgun knowledge from Chapter 6's author's notes (The Fight), we know that the kinetic energy output of a railgun, _K_ , is proportional to the length of the railgun squared, _d^2_ , or _K=q * d^2_ , where _q_ is some constant that we can solve for. This constant encompasses things like the strength of the magnetic field in the railgun and the power of the reactor.

In cutaways of the _UNSC Pillar of Autumn_ , we see that its central gun runs about 60% of its length. Assuming the _UNSC Everest_ 's main guns follow the same ratio, we can estimate their length to be 911 meters in length. Then, we assume our constant, _q_ , remains constant, and we just solve for energy. Under these assumptions, the kinetic energy of a shot from the _Everest_ hits with 6.7e15 Joules of energy, or approximately _106 times more powerful_ than Little Boy. In this model, our 600 metric ton projectile travels with a speed of 149,300 meters per second, or about 5e-4c. As we talked about in the recoil section, UNSC ships must be very, very heavy to counteract the energy output of such weapons feasibly.

We've talked about UNSC weapons, generated models for them, and crunched the numbers. The UNSC frigates are pretty powerful. The cruisers are devastating.

Now it's time to move onto the mass effect and how it might work in conjunction with magnetically accelerated projectile weapons like railguns. Full disclosure here: I don't have a fully fleshed-out model for the mass effect, so this is speculative and subject to retcon as the story progresses. If you know of anyone who's attempted to figure out this kind of thing with any degree of physical rigor, feel free to let me know in the reviews or PM!

We begin with a codex entry from the games: " _Mass effect fields are created through the use of element zero. Element zero can increase or decrease the mass content of space-time when subjected to an electrical current via dark energy. With a positive current, mass is increased. With a negative current, mass is decreased. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect._ " Biotic wrestlers can make weigh-ins much more easily with such power at their fingertips, but what about railguns?

Let's look at our two classical conservation questions from before and frame the question in terms of kinematics*:

Kinetic energy is conserved ( _K = 0.5mv^2; K_before = K_after_ )

Momentum is conserved ( _p = mv; p_before = p_after_ )

A moving object with a fixed mass, m, has a certain amount of kinetic energy and momentum. Notice how changing the mass for the energy equation causes velocity to shoot up quadratically yet changing mass for the momentum equation causes velocity to shoot up linearly. By changing mass, the mass effect field will violate one of these equations and, therefore, must "steal" either momentum or energy from somewhere (most likely the field itself).*

Now, in the last chapter, we've already worked out some equations for railguns. We can call upon these equations and play with proportionality to give us an intuitive sense of how a mass effect field might interact with a magnetically accelerated projectile launcher.

First, some groundwork. The codex states that current must constantly flow through this element-zero material to change mass. The greater the magnitude, the greater the change in mass. If the current flow to the element zero is shut off, the mass returns back to its original , fields get weaker at a distance. The equation is usually that field intensity is proportional to _(1/distance)^2_.

If you think of a balloon as you inflate it, when the balloon is small, the rubber is thicker on average per unit area. When you put more air into the balloon, the rubber per unit area (distance^2) is less. This power law is extremely common in real life- gravitational fields, the intensity of light, magnets, you name it, are all subject to it- so let's just assume that a mass effect field works in the same way.

Since a mass effect field's intensity falls off quickly, we must limit ourselves to inside of the ship. By increasing the mass of the bullet _inside_ of the barrel of the railgun, we can think of the mass effect field here as kind of coiling a spring up. Of course, we won't have to take my word for it since now we're going derive an equation which demonstrates this quantitatively.

We can actually demonstrate this in real life, together, right now. First, get a chair that can spin (like an office chair). Then, start spinning in it- faster is better, but don't vomit all over yourself. Once spinning, if you put your legs out, your speed slows down, and if you pull your legs in, you speed up. By increasing your rotational mass about the center of rotation, you increase your effective mass and, therefore, lower your velocity. This is an example of conservation of [angular] momentum at work! As you raise your feet up, kinetic energy is lost and turned into potential energy, so energy is still conserved, as well. Lowering your feet converts potential energy into kinetic energy.

Let's take a look at which of the two we're going to violate and what kind of numbers we'd need to hit the magic numbers: a 20kg projectile moving at 0.011c smacking into a target with a total energy of 1.1e14 Joules.

First, let's keep momentum as the conserved quantity. Since we know _m_after_ ( _20kg_ ) and _v_after_ ( _0.011c_ ), we know _p_after_. We can create an equation where we can measure how much energy is added by changing _m_before_ \- and by extension, _v_before_ \- in terms of _p_after_ since we keep this as the conserved quantity. Therefore, what we are after is an equation which takes the final speed of the projectile ( _v_after_ ), the final mass of the projectile ( _m_after_ ), and the amount by which mass of the projectile has been changed in the barrel of the gun ( _m_before_ ) to see how much energy is imparted. We simply use the following: _K_after - K_before = K_difference_ and solve for _v_before_ in terms of our other three terms through the conservation of momentum equation: _v_before = v_after * m_after / m_before_.

Solving the above system of equations gives us this burly beast: ( _0.5 * m_a * v_a^2) - (0.5 * (m_a / m_b ) m_a * v_a^2)_. The first half is _K_after_ and the second half is _K_before_ , which equals _(m_a / m_b) * 0.5 * m_a * v_a^2_. The interesting term here is ( _m_a / m_b)_ which essentially states that increasing mass asymptotically increases energy gain from the gun. If you double the mass of a bullet in your gun, you can increase your kinetic energy afterwards by an additional 50% if you hadn't used the mass effect. Likewise, decreasing the mass will actually rob you of energy and make your shot weaker. In the limit that you make the mass of the bullet approach infinity, you can at most double your energy per shot.

In this model, the mass effect field is storing potential energy, almost like a spring, and shutting the field off lets the bullet take the potential energy stored in the field (which itself is coming from the reactor of the ship running current through the element zero) and shoot out said projectile at prodigious speeds. There are issues with this as a working model, but this is fanfiction, not a scientific paper, so we're rolling with this until we can come up with something better.

A quick aside to this much longer aside: there is an optimization problem here that council designers must solve. Since the mass effect requires current to run and the railgun requires current to run, how much current must they devote to each to find the most optimal firing configuration?

Note that we can also solve this by keeping kinetic energy as the fixed quantity and varying momentum, but this is left as an exercise to the reader. The energy one is very slightly more reasonable, though, as fields can carry energy in the real world (see: electric field).

Okay, wow, that was a lot of math! Now let's compare our results. Using the numbers above, let's say the _Everest_ fires 2 rounds every 2 minutes with a total energy of 6.7e15 Joules per shot, making the _Everest_ output about 1.1e14 Joules per second in firepower alone, or about 1.8 Hiroshimas per second. A turian dreadnought outputs around 5.5e13 Joules per second, or a little less than 0.9 Hiroshimas per second, or about 50% worse by this measurement. Note the disparity and speed differences per shot. Still, though, we can now quantitatively show that run of the mill UNSC and Council ships are much closer to each other in power output than most people thought, myself included!

If you got this far, congratulations! It wasn't easy! I hope these notes were enlightening in understanding why things happened the way they did. These were definitely more math-heavy and less hand-wavy than prior notes, but the topics discussed were relatively simple. Future notes will probably swing back to waving hands if only because fanfiction as a website has no ability to add mathematical notation to stories and the math can get _very_ complicated.

If you have any questions about how things work, let me know and I'll prioritize them in future author's notes. If you're wondering why something has a different magnitude than you expected it to, also feel free to ask and you'll get a long-winded response like this one in a future chapter. Here's what I've got on the backlog (paraphrased):

\- **Mf0012** : How would futuristic sublight space engines function?  
\- **A random guy:** How would mass effect shields function?

* * *

*For the more technically minded among you, I didn't derive a model for the mass effect field problem in terms of the relativistic mass/momentum/energy equivalence or a Higgs field interaction because I was too lazy and not smart enough to figure it out, respectively. If anyone has anything on the topic- thoughts, ideas, similar diatribes, etc, I'd love to hear about it.


	8. The Elevators

**John Shepard  
Subdistrict Seven, New Taiyuan, UEG Shanxi,** Shanxi System  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 4, 2561**

The blue sun of Shanxi was just beginning to crest over the sky in front of John causing ripples of deep blues and violets to percolate through the darkness of the approach to the city. He leaned over to look out of the front the bus as he maneuvered his backpack with his feet. "Are we there yet?" John quietly asked no one in particular.

In the seat across the row, a hulking alien creature occupied an entire row to himself. It looked something like the lizards that John learned about in his stellar biology class, but with two arms, two legs, and gigantic. The creature, John's physical education teacher, opened his eyes and turned to look at the young child. "You have asked this question thirteen times before and the answer has been the same each time. Go back to sleep."

John knew this was no time for sleep. "But Gym Master Ludomai, the buildings are different, and look," he pointed to the unending vertical line in the distance, "that's the elevator!"

From the driver's seat, Mister Kapatu chuckled as the highway began to give way to the skyscrapers of the city center. "We're actually pretty close, John."

"Do not encourage him!" the alien growled at the human driver, "human adults are sometimes even more exhausting than their younglings."

Shanxi was a small, but new colony of a bit over a two million people, and her capital, New Taiyuan, claimed a little over a million of those, along with about five thousand non-humans on a trial basis. The world was supposed to be the first step to not just allowing humans and aliens to acknowledge each other's existence, but to coexist. Hostile alien ships orbiting above the world were not helping.

As the highway turned into a major city road, John carefully leaned over his sleeping sister to look up at the towers of glass and steel. "Woah," he breathed out. Each one must have been at least two hundred stories tall!

Then, as quickly as the skyscrapers appeared, they disappeared. The bus' view changed from buildings to _the_ building, the space elevator itself. John pulled himself back from the window, taking care not to wake his sleeping sibling, and leaned into the corridor of the bus to get a better view through the front. Even looking at the structure, its size was unfathomable to him- the base must have been a kilometer tall and just as wide!

"Hey, Ludomai," the human driver spoke as he merged onto a highway with a slew of other vehicles all headed in the same direction, "start getting the kids up. We'll be here real soon."

The large alien grunted and heaved himself up, still crouching in the diminutive frame of the bus. "Students! Rise!" His orders were met with groans. "We shall be arriving at your elevator's anchor momentarily. Prepare to disembark this vehicle."

John blocked out the complaints reverberating through his transport and instead turned to his sister. "Hey, Jane, you awake?" The question was followed up with a gentle shaking.

"Hmm," came the reflexive response, "yeah," she managed.

"Check it out! We're almost there!"

"Mhmm," she almost whispered as her eyes opened.

That was good enough for the young boy when the splendor of the outside was begging for his attention. Around the base, an uncountable number of tendrils of gray concrete and silvery metal made their way throughout the city. Each one was filled with cars, busses, trains, and people making their way to the relative safety of the orbital anchor. A teeming mass of color- people- scurried about the base like so many ants while the contrails of militia planes cutting through the clouds provided an ever-reassuring cover.

John's bus descended into the maw of the elevator bumper to bumper at a forty kilometer per hour pace, give or take, concrete pillars zipping by. A wide berth of vehicles rapidly unloaded its cargo as soldiers drove off the emptied husks.

"Okay kids," Mister Kapatu yelled out, eyes darting to the central rear-view mirror, "when we arrive, remember the emergency evacuation drills. Have your belongings ready and hold hands with your seat partners."

Vehicles blew past the security checkpoints and directly into the unloading bays. John's pulled hard to the left-center lanes and pulled into bay 9. The door opened outwards allowing an army trooper onto the bus. He turned to look down the aisle pausing briefly at Gym Master Ludomai's towering Sangheili form before uttering some words to Mister Kapatu.

Kapatu nodded and stood up. "Alright, everyone, welcome to the anchor! Just like we practiced! Buddy up and let's go! Remember to count off as you step off the bus!" He grabbed a railing and followed the trooper off the vehicle.

John stood up, slinging his backpack over his left shoulder as his right hand tightly held Jane's left. "Ready, Jane?"

Her right hand's knuckles were turning white as she gripped her knapsack. "Yep."

John silently moved left into the aisle, taking his place before Gym Master Ludomai. Nofoto and Susan went forward, bags smacking along the seats. John followed suit, Jane in tow, just like they'd practiced countless times before. They followed the girls down the stairs, out of the bus, counting off as he did so, and into the waiting area on a ramp leading to the launch bays.

The anchor's base was alive with activity as cars, busses, and military vehicles of every size and shape moved through their practiced motions towards the orbital anchor's array of cargo boxes-cum-lifeboats. A cursory glance showed most everyone being as calm as could be given the situation. John grew up hearing stories about evacuations from colonies- Miridem, Skopje, Actium, Sigma Octanus IV, to name a few. The adults knew what to do.

"This way," the solder beckoned towards John's group of children and teachers, "into this line over there." Ignoring the large numbers of children, the line was largely filled with aliens of every color, just like the ones on the holoscreens.

"Woah, Jane," John shook his sister's hand, "look," while pointing at a pair of ogre-sized monstrosities with his other, "hunters!"

Mister Ludomai approached behind the young boy as a sea of children continued to move around him. "Mgalekgolo, Johnathan."

The boy looked up, then back at the enormous aliens. "Mega-lego," John repeated.

"That is sufficiently close."

Ahead of their group, a large mechanical lift moved a lifeboat into position. The bonded hunter pair and a variety of other humans and aliens- easily over three hundred- moved into behemoth as soldiers managing the evacuation shepherded them all along.

After the aliens, it was the human soldiers' turn. They were all clad in gray and brown armor as they piled into a cylindrical car filled with ammunition and medical supplies. John saluted as the door began to close. Two of them saluted back as door closed and cylinder flew up into space.

John looked at his art teacher. "Hey, Mister Kapatu, where are they going?" Kapatu was pretty old, but he fought in the war. If anyone knew what was going on, he would.

"The aliens are fighting to stop the space elevator while our soldiers are fighting to keep it open. As long as it's open, more of us can escape."

"Oh." Jon looked back at where the elevator car used to be, then back at his teacher. "Are they going to win?"

"I hope so, John," Kapatu said as he ruffled the child's hair. "Do you have your bag?"

"Yes sir!"

Mister Kapatu examined the bag. "Is it tagged?"

"Yep!" John pulled his bag front and center and flipped it around, revealing the white plastic rectangle with the spotted box printed on it, "see?"

"Excellent." Mister Kapatu picked up the bag with ease and walked out in front of his mass of children. "Students, listen up, take your bags over to that conveyor belt! We're going to be packing as many people as we can into the escape pods, meaning your stuff will get to you as soon as it can!"

"What about my dinosaur," a child asked.

"You can all bring one stuffed animal or action figure," the teacher acquiesced, "but no more." Someone started crying.

Everyone shuffled over as the same pod from before descended. A huge robotic mechanism moved the old pod over as a much taller pod was maneuvered into the launch mechanism. The new one's door opened, revealing walls stuffed with food and blankets.

Then, the other pod followed suit. Soldiers poured out of it with red dribbling from small holes in their armor. Others were dragged out on cots, unmoving. John saluted them too, but they just responded with tired stares.

"Alright, kids," Mister Kapatu yelled out, "let's move out, one bus at a time! Form up in a line on your bus chaperone. Count off as you enter."

The children formed up on each of their teachers, John and his sister, Hannah, behind Gym Master Ludomai. His chaperone motioned for the children to move forward.

"One!"

John turned to sister as he walked forward. "Ready, Jane?"

"Yeah." She pulled her stuffed penguin a little closer, eyes red from lack of sleep. "I'm tired."

John paused a moment for his sister's number before following suit- "Seven!" and walked into the pod. "Well, we'll get some sleep on the flight." He made his way to a seat in the back. His sister followed. The seat wasn't that comfortable, but John could fall asleep in it just the same, as long as everyone stopped talking. Every single kid was having a conversation with their neighbor.

His best friend, Billy, made his way to the seat next to his as the rest of the pod was quickly filled with his classmates. "Hey John, where do you think we're going?"

"Hey Billy," John reached under his seat and grabbed a pillow. "Mister Kapatu said we're probably headed to Partition or Desdoron Five."

"What about the covie worlds? They're kind of close."

"Yeah, but we're humans. They hate humans." Billy could be really stupid, sometimes.

"Yeah, but-"

"Silence, younglings!" Ludomai bellowed. Every conversation immediately ceased. "Excellent discipline. Now, buckle up," John grabbed his seatbelt, "we will arrive at the human world of Partition in about two weeks. Once we enter slipspace, I want everyone sleeping. No talking for at least six hours." The escape pod grumbled with dissatisfaction.

"Told you!" John said as his belt clicked into place. He looked over to his sister- she already buckled in and was already trying to fall asleep.

"Darn," Billy grimaced as he put his pillow to his side, "my dad is stationed there."

Out in front of the pod, the doors started closing. "Is he with second fleet?" John turned to Jane, but she was already out.

"Yeah," Billy's belt clicked into place, "he just made captain on the _UNSC Uncanny Valley_."

"Woah, nice, you never told me that! What kind of ship is that?"

Billy's grin almost reached his eyes. "Strident-class frigate, one of the new type B ones! He just got the commission two weeks ago."

"Nice!" John tugged at his restraints. The chair had already automatically tightened them to fit his small body. "He was on one of those Halberds before, right?"

"The _Widening Gyre_. It was-"

Billy was cut off by the blaring of a claxon. Lights dimmed from a clear white to a deep crimson. "Launching in 3," a robotic voice began as the two children smiled at each other, "2, 1."

This was always the coolest part. John's stomach lurched as the pod shot upwards towards space.

* * *

 **Captain Michael "Sully" Sullivan  
Aranuka Space Tether,** above Aranuka, Gilbert Isles, Earth, Sol System  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 4, 2561**

Captain Michael Sullivan's stomach lurched as the elevator's passenger pod came to a rapid halt high above the Earth. He grimaced with displeasure.

The woman across from him, Ambassador Anita Goyle, looked perfectly calm. "Something wrong?" she asked.

"Nah," Sullivan replied as he put his smile back on, "I just hate tethers."

She tilted her head to the side a bit, trying to get a read on him before her lips curled slightly. "Motion sickness?"

"Old war memories."

Ambassador Goyle's hint of a smile vanished. "I'm sorry."

Sullivan's mind raced back to his first encounter with the Covenant all those years ago, as those purple, bulbous vessels descended into the atmosphere of his old academy, fired their energy weapons, and popped a portion of the tether into a fine mist. Those heart-wrenching screams of his classmates falling back down were seared into his memory forever. "Nothing to be sorry about," he smiled back reflexively, "ancient history."

The door behind him finally opened, prompting a pre-recorded voice. "We have arrived at Aranuka Space Tether Geostationary Orbital Facility," it said with with the customary feminine tenor perpetually laced with that mild irritation, "please disembark and have a safe trip."

Sullivan unclipped his seat's belts, grabbed his singular piece of luggage from underneath him, and followed Anita out onto the orbital facility. Like every other one, it was simply huge. Since the station and its space elevator were one of six Earth used for all of its cargo lifting requirements, it had to be. A cavernous main entrance of silver and gray- suitably sized for the herculean task of moving an interstellar civilization's-worth quantity of goods- illuminated by the reliable yellow of sodium lights greeted the visitors. Aranuka was one of the quieter space elevators- nothing like Quito, or even Havana- but it was still perpetually packed and humming with the vibrant energy of all of its cohabitants. Artificial gravity plates sat below, anchoring visitors to the ground, while a dome made of transparent aluminum gave visitors a view of the docked ships and the Sol fleet. Robotic arms and selective applications of the gravitic plating moved heavy cargo pods onto and off of the space tether while throngs of dockworkers coordinated dozens of ships coming and going.

The pair made their way to the side and off to the small vehicle bay. Dozens of pelicans, shuttlecraft, condors, and darters sat around with crews and cargo coming and going. At bay 7B, a bored looking pilot leaned over his SKT-13 shuttlecraft before looking up. "Captain Sullivan and Ambassador Goyle?" He stood up and saluted. "You must be my cargo."

Sullivan smiled and gave a weak salute as continued forward. "Sure are. Ensign?"

"Ensign Dale, sir. You two are headed to the _Infinity,_ right?"

"That's right," Anita confirmed as she looked into the stout rear doorway of the diminutive craft. "Anywhere is fine, I'm guessing?"

"Sure," he went into the squat doorway and moved forward to the pilot's seat. "Just clamp the luggage down underneath you," he warned as he plopped himself down into his seat and put on a flight helmet. "You guys have everything you need?"

"Sure do, Ensign. Ladies first?" Sullivan motioned to the doorway.

Sullivan detected the faintest hint of a smile on Ambassador Goyle's lips. "And they say chivalry is dead," she dryly responded. She hunched over slightly and moved into the diminutive shuttle, luggage dragging behind her, taking care not to get her army dress pants caught on the metallic edges of the seats.

Sullivan followed her in. Inside of the ten meter long craft, eight crash seats sat at forty five degree angles to the wall. Thick side walls provided a healthy amount of lumbar support in case of any sudden acceleration. The inside was dimly lit with those yellow lights that made everything inside look like sick. Anita and Michael both made their way to the front to get their best view out of the reinforced glass canopy.

The whole SKT-13 shuttle design was ancient, itself a derivative of the ancient Class 3 "Bumblebee" escape pod first used in the Halcyon-class way back in 2510, but no replacement had yet been designed. It differed only that two rotating reactionless drives with maneuvering thrusters had been haphazardly slapped on, along with a microfusion reactor to power them, while the stabilization fins for atmospheric reentry were removed.

The door in the back of the shuttle slid shut as the lateral thrusters rotated downwards with a mechanical whirring. "Orbital traffic control," the young ensign began, "this is _Infinity Ess-Fourteen-Aych_ at Aranuka Orbital requesting priority brachistrone burn to _You-Enn-Ess-See Infinity_ , over." He looked around the shuttle bay listening to words only he could hear. "Wilco, control. Beginning transit now, over."

The now-rotated thrusters rumbled to life, their ferocious vibrations rattling the aging shuttle. Features of the titanium walls disappeared below the cockpit's field of view. Past the first airlock door, artificial gravity disengaged completely as the main thrusters rotated furiously to prepare for slowdown. "Firing counter burn," Ensign Dale held a finger over one of the infinite number of buttons on the dash, "now." Another roar permeated through the thin walls from the reactionless drives as the walls of the orbital station gave way to the hustle and bustle of Mother Earth's geosynchronous orbit.

Behind Sullivan, the sun beat down on humanity's home, the star's illuminating rays reflecting on the underside of countless ships. The sunrise from Aranuka and the beauty of space was a nice change of pace from the artificial light of the Bravo-6 bunker and the perpetually dark environment of prowlers he'd grown accustomed to. In front, human ships of every size and shape, largely civilian, were frantically scrambling to comply with the newly instituted martial law. Small specs of gray with brights motes of blue and yellow exhaust- the UNSC Navy- were further out, performing shakedown maneuvers and preparing for another thirty year war.

In spite of the healthy amounts of life, Sullivan only noticed the shortcomings. Humanity's place in the galaxy was still unassured at best. Resources were stretched to the breaking point, this shuttle being a prime example. Despite being an ancient design with limited autopilot capabilities, it was never updated. He knew a design overview wasn't scheduled for another decade, ostensibly to instead focus on updating the still devastated UNSC fleet.

The Halberd-class destroyer he noticed being retrofitted at the Aranuka docks was a strip-down special, lacking half of its point-defense, nearly any and all of sensors, tertiary communications, and most of its battery back-up: a floating monument to the desperation of the late 2540s and early 2550s. It was still in service, of course.

"Alright," Ensign Dale turned around to his cargo, "we'll be meeting the _Infinity_ above Mexico City. We'll be doing a four-gee burn, inertially compensated down to point-one-gee inside. Eee-tee-aye is just under thirty minutes," he explained before turning back.

"Excellent, Ensign." Ambassador Goyle turned back to Sullivan, "enjoying the view, Captain?"

Sullivan snapped back to attention. "Hmm? Oh, absolutely. You don't get to see this sitting conference rooms all day."

Anita, eyebrow slightly raised, turned to Sullivan as she rubbed her knuckles in thought before putting them at rest on her thighs. "I always pictured ONI as living out of the shadows of their prowlers," she shrugged, "no matter how ridiculous that actually is."

"I'd take a conference room over a prowler any day," Sullivan reminisced, "unless I was the pilot, that is. On prowlers, they keep the lights off to lower heat emissions ever so slightly. Lower heat emissions means the prowler is tougher to detect, plus that higher thrust capacity while cloaked. Even if it's, say, point-zero-one percent extra thrust, it's still extra thrust. Onboard, the only illumination is from head lamps and holo-monitors. Otherwise, it's just always nighttime."

The Ambassador responded with a grimace. "That sounds awful."

"Compared to breaking bread with your spoiled covvie bra-"

"Systems confirmed green," the pilot interrupted, "prepare for burn in three, two, one."

The engines thrust pushed Sullivan back into the seats ever so gently, padded support cupping his left side. On a trip to, say, Mars, it might have caused some soreness, but this was just a quick jaunt across Earth.

As the shuttle flew, it picked up some rotation around the center of thrust. The view out front shifted from High Earth orbit to the surface itself. Far below but moving closer, in Low Earth Orbit, the hulking masses of metal known as Orbital Defense Platforms sat peacefully, daring anyone to come close. Below them, the milky whites, blues, greens, and yellows of humanity's cradle dominated the background.

Ambassador Goyle broke the silence in the craft. "So, Ensign, why the Navy?"

"Oh, umm," Ensign Doyle sat up from his slouch and talk back in raised voice, "I've always just loved ships, ma'am. Martian, born and raised. Mom worked at the 'yards." He turned his head to face his passengers. "Her first was the _Pillar of Autumn_ ," he beamed with pride.

"You sound like a shipwatcher," Sullivan guessed.

"Yes sir," he turned back, "no better place to do that than the _Infinity_ , you know? Always going somewhere on there."

"I can imagine," Sullivan responded. "Have a favorite? Human or covenant?"

"Covenant? Hell no, they're ugly as sin, uhm, sir."

"At ease, son," the ONI captain chuckled, "'couldn't agree more."

"But for the UNSC? That's a tough one. The Strident-class, plus that first new Actium-class cruiser being laid down on Mars, they're good looking alright, but they're too cold. _Infinity_ is too big to be beautiful." The Ensign scratched his temple, coaxing the gears in brain to keep churning through his mental encyclopedia, "as good as the Halcyon-class looked, I've gotta give it to the old Valiant-class cruisers."

The ambassador nodded. "They do have a certain je ne sais quoi to them, don't they?"

"Darn straight, ma'am. They've got that aesthetic that just screams pure function, you know, but somehow still looks more like art than science." Ambassador Goyle nodded in agreement with the ensign. "Haven't seen a Valiant in years, though."

Sullivan shook his head in disapproval. "There weren't many to begin with. The war took them all except for the _Sun-sin_ , I think, and now apparently the _Everest._ "

"Nah, _Sun-sin_ got scrapped in late fifty-nine after the Battle of Huctyus," Ensign Dale corrected, "took three Brute plasma torps across the side. I think the _Everest_ is all that's left of the Valiants."

"Damn." Michael winced as he mentally prepared to tally up another several thousand dead, "all hands?"

"Nah, nothing that serious," the pilot responded, "brass decided not to repair a ship that old. Most of the crew survived, actually. Those Valiants are tough, you know."

Routine shuttle flights tended to be routine, and after half an hour of routine small talk, the shuttle glided through the _Infinity's_ enormous hangar deck and stopped at a landing pad nearer the center. "We've arrived. The ground crew will take you to your destination."

"Thanks for the ride, Ensign," Sullivan managed as he fumbled with that damned third buckle.

"Not a problem, Captain," he said as he got up with groan and grinned. "Yer' not a bad guy, for a spook."

"Thanks," Sullivan smiled back as he got the last clasp off, "I'll take that as a complement." He stood up slowly, as befitting a man his age, and lifted his carry-on up from under his seat. "Need help, Ambassador?"

"Yeah," she looked down at exasperation, "how do you get this off?"

"Here," the Captain bent over and effortlessly actuated the restraint mechanism, then stepped aside. "It's always easier from the outside looking in."

The trio exited the shuttlecraft into the hangar. As the pilot of the craft broke off in the direction of some technicians making their way over, Ambassador Goyle and Captain Sullivan, flanked by crew members, moved past a set of landing strips, next to walls of pelicans and fighters, down a set of ramps, and next a set of elevators. One of the crew spoke up, "the ship's CO will be meeting us here momentarily, sirs," before joining the remainder in an at-rest stance.

Captain Sullivan gently placed his bag down. "Thanks, son." His view shifted to the hangar itself- filled with shuttles, fighters, bombers, and pelicans of every type.

Not ten seconds later, an elevator descended a few feet away. Out stepped a middle-aged man in gray officer's combat fatigues and a white hat bearing a new flag officer's singular silver star and branches. Captain Sullivan noted the man was shorter than remembered with more creases in his cheeks. His hat sat atop a well-trimmed crop of black hair with thin streaks of gray, though his eyes let everyone know he was as sharp as he was three decades ago. The two men reflexively saluted each other.

"So you're the spook," the man noted. His eyes made their way from Sullivan's face to his nametag, and a smile crept along the man's face, "I thought ONI was sending their best."

A few of the crew looked around uncomfortably.

Captain Sullivan sized up the man in question before allowing a smile to match his. "You know, Rear Admiral Lower Half Lasky doesn't have the same ring as Captain Lasky." He paused, "mmm," followed by another pause, "Captain Lasky," and let the words swirl around his tongue like a fine cabernet. "Sounds like the name a focus group came up with. I'll let Hood know that he'll be demoting you next time we meet. For public relations purposes."

The man in front of him broke into a full smile and went to embrace the ONI captain. "Sully, it's been too long. How are you?"

Sullivan reciprocated, "not bad Lasky," giving him a pat on the back, "not bad," before stepping away from his childhood friend. "Far too long." Captain Sullivan stepped back to present his co-passenger, "Admiral, allow me to introduce Ambassador Anita Goyle."

The ambassador extended her hand. "It's an honor, Admiral Lasky."

His hand met hers and shook, "the honor is all mine, ambassador," before opening his palm upwards to the hangar at large. "Roland, introduce yourselves to our guests."

From somewhere just out of sight, a masculine baritone with an American accent spoke. "Welcome aboard! I'm Roland, ship's AI, at your service."

"Hello, Roland," the ambassador warmly responded.

"Right," Lasky turned to a young woman, "Ensign Mariani, could you two please take the Ambassador's bag and escort her to her quarters?" The young officer saluted as the ambassador gave a polite smile. "Captain Sullivan, I assume you're not parting with your bag?"

Sully glowered. "Can't, sir, ONI protocol," and shook his head, "I believe the official policy is 'over my dead body.'"

Lasky smirked. "Fair. Ambassador, we'll meet up in a bit. Sully, on me," he commanded as he turned from the elevator behind him and into a separate hallway just beside.

After a short 'see you in a bit,' the ambassador disappeared behind the elevator doors as Lasky began moving down a long corridor just behind his old friend.

The two walked in silence for roughly five minutes as crew busily walked past until Lasky broke the silence. "Hey, Sully-"

"Hmm?"

"-did you ever keep in touch with Orenski?"

"Hmm." Captain Sullivan let his memory stir. Him, Lasky, and a cadet, April Orenski, were the only survivors from the planetside of the battle of Corbulo Military Academy and Circinus IV back in '26. Just three kids on a planet of over a million. His very first encounter with the covenant.

"Only through her reports," Sullivan responded. "She passed away in '59."

The admiral's pace slowed as he nodded twice. "Combat?"

Sullivan responded with a grimace. "Survivor's guilt."

The rest of the walk down the hallway was a quiet one. The Captain's eyes took in the crisp, white, angular walls and the clean yellows, reds, and blues that demarcated service panels. All of these were illuminated by the sunlight-colored lights that refracted just so off of the walls, like Earth's sun off of a fresh morning snow. And all if this was punctuated by the lessons of humanity's hubris taught to him so thoroughly by the past thirty years.

The two childhood friends walked through the door and into the officer's lounge. Metallic tables with faux-wood inserts cluttered the floor with comfortable chairs around them, four to six per. A window to the outside dominated the far side of the room letting in the vibrant greens, deep blues, and warm yellows of Mother Earth.

"Bar?" Lasky gestured to the gray slab of titanium peppered with stools manned by a surly forty-something-year old. "Or table?"

"Bar's fine."

The Admiral moved effortlessly onto an obviously familiar stool.

Sully dragged his carry-on next to a suitable candidate just to the left and gently shook it. Satisfied with the stool's balance, he climbed up next to his old friend, hands around the metallic-rimmed cushion.

"So," a bartender rounded the corner, "what'll it be, sirs?"

Lasky grinned in anticipation. "A shot of the ship's plasma, Hawthorne."

The bartender raised his eyebrow. "You sure, sir? That stuff is-"

"I know what I'm getting myself into."

Hawthorne turned. "And you, Captain?"

"The same," Sullivan responded without hesitation.

"Comin' right up." The bartender sounded almost disappointed as his hands moved past a mixer and to the glasses.

Two shots of clear liquid from an unmarked bottle appeared in front of them. Lasky and Sullivan both lifted theirs up.

"To Corbulo Military Academy," Admiral Lasky began.

"And the heroes still there," Captain Sullivan finished. "Axios."

"Axios."

The two kicked back their drinks.

Lasky grimaced as he slammed his empty shot glass down. "That was terrible."

"Best I've ever had." Sullivan gently placed his on the bartop. "There are six thousand people on this ship. More than likely that one of them knows how to distill something decent. Hawthorne, two glasses of water and some privacy, please."

"Coming right up, sirs." The bartender pulled up two glasses from a mechanism with a satisfying "pfwish," filled them, and placed them on the table. "Anything else, sirs?"

"That's it," Lasky gave a warm smile, "thanks Sergeant."

The bartender saluted the other two, turned about face, and moved into a kitchen by way of a sliding door.

The admiral looked at the clear bottle of plasma sitting on the counter. "Why does the UNSC even bother packing those sugary gelatin things? No one eats them- they're disgusting."

"To make alcohol with."

Lasky paused to digest that information. "Really?"

"Yep."

A moment of silence lingered before Lasky pivoted. "Anyway-"

The ONI captain waited for the kitchen door to close before interrupting. "Enough of this sentimental shit. First contact."

"I got a chance to read your abstract." Lasky pulled one side of his face into a knowing grin. "Peaceful aliens, huh?"

"Yep." Sully leaned back across his seat's terrible support for a quick stretch, "shuttle cramps-" and paused for a moment to let out a groan. "-god damn, I'm an old man. Then there's some mean xenos, too, and a massive number of unknown quantities.

"But let's start with the good guys. They call themselves 'Quarians.'"

* * *

 **Author's note:**

Long time no see, everyone. I write this story while traveling for work and my last job stopped all business travel for a long time. The good news is that I got a new job with lots of time for writing. The bad news is that you should probably reread the story to reacquaint yourself with what's happening.

As some extra sweetness for you, the next chapter is almost done and is where the action really starts. If I ever do decide to give up on the story, I'll post the outline for all ~40 chapters to not keep y'all hanging.

Finally, a big thank you to the people who left reviews and messaged me asking to keep going- you're the reason I kept going instead of catching up on my reading.

Anyway, enough of the boring "story" stuff, let's talk physics. Space elevators, also rarely called space tethers, are an age-old science fiction concept. The idea is simple in principle: what if we had an elevator so tall that it could ferry equipment into space? In Halo 2 and 3, these structures played a huge role as the backdrops to New Mombasa, a city in Africa. In Mass Effect, they are nowhere to be seen. Is it science, science fiction, or science fantasy? Here's how we'll break it down:

What is an orbit and how does it work?

What is geostationary orbit and why is it special?

What are the basic requirements for a space elevator?

How would we build such a structure?

Is a space elevator science, science fiction, or science fantasy?

We begin our exploration with orbits. Wikipedia defines an orbit to be "a gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space," such as a planet around a star, or a spaceship around a planet.

When talking about a smaller body (such as a planet) orbiting a way more massive body (such as a star), the easiest way to think of orbits is that the object in question (the planet) is moving really fast in one direction, while the more massive body (the star) is pulling the object in question inwards. In this example, the planet is moving fast enough that the star can never drag it in completely, but slow enough that the planet doesn't just escape the star system. This "equilibrium" between two celestial bodies is an orbit.

Technically, any two objects will orbit around each other's barycenter (center of mass), but we're going to take the limit that one object is infinitely lighter or heavier than another one. For example, the _UNSC Infinity_ and the _UNSC Everest_ are both really big, but they're vastly smaller and lighter than the whole of Earth, so it's an acceptable approximation. The distance from the barycenter to the center of mass of the object in question is the _orbital radius_. If we're talking about something like a spaceship orbiting a planet, we may instead choose to use _orbital height_ , or the distance from sea level to the ship. For a spaceship orbiting a planet, the measurements are related by way of the radius of the planet through the following equation: _orbital radius = orbital height + radius of the planet_.

Moving back to the planet and the star, the closer our planet is to our star, the faster its rotation around the star is. That's because the distance travelled per orbit is smaller while the gravitational attraction between the bodies is larger. Earth's _orbital period_ , or the time it takes to make one complete revolution around its star, the Sun, is 365 days (approximately). We give this orbital period a special name called a "year" or a "solar year." Mercury, which is closer to the Sun, has an orbital period that's about 88 days. Neptune's orbital period is a little longer, at about 60,182 days. Quite a difference!

If we search on google images for a model picture of our solar system, we'll notice that the planets are arranged in approximately a flat plane, but nothing is preventing an object from being outside of that plane, orbiting on a different angle from everything else but still orbiting the sun nonetheless. This is called _orbital inclination_ , and some objects in our solar system are on very inclined orbits compared to our own, such as the dwarf planet Eris (44 degrees), or Pluto (17 degrees).

Moving onwards to special types, Geosynchronous orbit (GSO) is a type of orbit where the orbital period (e.g. one orbit around the planetary body in question) perfectly matches the rotation period of the body itself. For Earth, that means that a GSO is one that takes approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds, or the length of Earth's sidereal day. On modern day Earth, most objects in GSO are communications satellites- the orbit has a number of properties that make it attractive for such applications.

Geostationary orbit, also known as geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO), however, is a special type of geosynchronous orbit wherein the satellite in question stays permanently above a place below it on the ground. Due to physics which I will not derive here, the only way this can happen is if the satellite is over the equator of the planet, hence the name, i.e. its orbital inclination is exactly 0 degrees. Orbital altitude is approximately 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above sea level, which would cause an orbital period of very close to one sidereal day. GEO is a popular orbit for communications satellites, weather satellites, and color-sensitive oceanographic equipment, among others.

In the year 2561, however, GEO takes on special significance for a structure known in science fiction as the space elevator. Imagine, for a moment, that there was a structure that could reach from the ground all the way into space. We could use that structure to deliver goods into space, removing the costly expense of rockets from the equation, and making space vastly cheaper. This structure would have to be really, really, really tall and be made out of some incredibly lightweight but incredibly strong material. Such a structure is called a space elevator and would take the form of the world's most expensive string with a counterweight attached to it.

Let's pivot for a moment to an experiment. Grab a string with a weight on one end and begin spinning it. Notice how it wants to pull away from you- that's called centrifugal force.

Imagine your hand is the Earth and the string with counterweight is a space elevator. The elevator will always be above one point on the Earth, so the easiest place for spaceships to dock with the elevator is GEO! Any higher or lower and the orbit wouldn't be stable; it wouldn't have that equilibrium we talked about earlier, so docking would be a real nail biter. Go lower and you'd be moving too fast. Go higher and you'd be moving too slowly.

Now, is a space elevator science fiction or science fantasy? The idea has been around for almost one hundred years, but we have nothing close to what would be required for a material to build such a structure. Graphene has been proposed as a possible solution, but we haven't figured out how to produce it at quantity. Verdict is an extremely plausible science fiction that could be reality within our lifetimes if we focus more on science research funding.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I placed orbital defense platforms in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). LEO makes a lot of sense for orbital defensive installations- the faster rotational speed (not higher than 127 minutes as compared to the ~24 hours of GSO) means that most orbital platforms will have the opportunity to fire, vent excess heat, reload, and fire again during an orbital engagement. Additionally, an orbital defense platform is unlikely to be as maneuverable as a ship and the added firing distance means that the defense platform has less rotational movement per shot- a huge boon to accuracy against potentially relatively fast-moving vessels.

* * *

 **Responses to questions:**

I'm going to try a new section after the author's note- a response section. Here, I can answer selected questions from the previous chapter in a public and transparent way, especially since plenty of people are probably wondering the same thing.

Funkyshnelpu jr: " _I'm confused about the date._ " A number of people have previously expressed some questions about this. Firstly, the dates in Mass Effect are the human calendar, not the council calendar. The council calendar is never explicitly stated except in a single off-comment in a codex: " _The Citadel Council was founded in 500 BCE… The founding of the Council marks the beginning of the Galactic Standard (GS) calendar, the year 0 GS._ " Canonical Mass Effect humanity discovers the turians in the year 2157 CE through the first contact war, putting the council calendar at 2657, hence the discrepancy. Halo Humanity is placed in the same location as in the canonical universe with their own canonical timeline, since the two are not causally related in any way, shape, or form.

Redshirt07: " _Great chapter, except for the 'New Texas Republic' reference... The inclusion is especially nonsensical since this is set after all of Earth has been united for centuries._ " Actually, that's not entirely true. From Halopedia:Unified Earth Government: " _Many national governments continue to exist under the ultimate authority of the UEG, though their influence and importance has greatly waned. In addition, the individual cultures, languages, and other such unique characteristics live on among the people under the UEG as late as the 26th century. By the 26th century, the endonyms of several countries, including Hanguk and Deutschland, have been adopted into official usage alongside their exonyms._ " Texas has a sufficiently different culture from the rest of the United States (which has probably fractured from an earlier civil war by this point).

Prince Sheogorath: " _...isn't it better to use Star system rather than Solar system? At least when aliens are concerned, since Solar comes from Sol, our systems star._ " Solar system does come for the word 'Sol,' but can be used for similar star systems- a star, some planetary bodies, etc. For example, the (somewhat) newly discovered 2MASS J23062928-0502285 (TRAPPIST-1) system from the 2016 paper "Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star" by Gillon et al is an example of a solar system (doi:10.1038/nature17448).


	9. The Descent

**Prime Spear Saren Arterius  
** _ **TSF**_ _ **Sacred Duty**_ **,** Achalius-class Support Cruiser  
 **Council Calendar: Day 13, Year 2657**

After a cursory check, Prime Spear Saren Arterius folded up his black M8 Predator and placed the lightweight assault rifle on his back. Powerful magnetic clasps on his armor pulled the weapon close, affixing it with a light plunk. "Alright soldiers, time to bring these newcomers to heel. Weapons check!"

The soldiers yelled out "check!" in unison.

"Armor check!"

"Check!" they cried out again.

Saren removed his helmet from the locker and placed it gently on his head. The back part of the helmet wrapped itself around his head as it closed, then a _"pssh"_ from the suction of the seal reverberated through the enclosed area inside. A diagnostic tool displayed a simple green dot in the top right of his display. "Systems check!" he yelled out.

"Check!"

"Good. I'll see you all on the ground. Now let's move out!" Saren turned on the balls of his armored, taloned feet and strode inside of one of ten Actina-class shuttles parked in the cruiser's large bay. His hundred soldiers followed suit.

Saren looked around the interior of the familiar ship as his pilots walked past. "Excuse me, sir," said one as he squeezed past his prime spear. The crew and its cargo all sat down in the front-facing utilitarian chairs as the door on the left closed and shut with a hiss.

"Depressurizing the bay in twelve," the shuttle's intercom blared out. "Depressurizing," it continued, followed by a "depressurization complete" forty seconds later, "spirits guide you down there."

Saren's shuttle's mass effect field engaged. He could tell- his stomach always felt like it was about to flip whenever it did. Like a calpus' gullet, the cruiser bay doors opened outwards and vertically, as the shuttle lifted itself up off of the launch bay, its body pregnant with anticipation. Behind the protection of his cruiser, an inky void and the curvature of the blue and white alien world below dominated the background.

"Launching," his pilot informed the crew. Saren didn't feel a thing as his shuttle, the lead, of course, glided itself from the bay and into space. He could see elements of the turian fleet as little, tiny gray dots illuminated by the blue star at the center of the system. His shuttle fired its forward thrusters and began to fall into the planet. In the far distance, debris and turian ships surrounded a massive, metal tendril reaching into space. A blue tear in space opened up above the spire, followed by the red and and orange of an explosion from its' central station. "Must be the boarding parties," the pilot thought aloud as he pressed a few buttons on the control console.

Motes of orange moved across the interface. The backup pilot darted her head left and right. "We see you tenth wing," she spoke to no one that Saren could see, "your assistance is appreciated."

"Acknowledged," the head pilot responded before craning his head back, "beginning our descent."

Saren's shuttle dipped slightly, then rocketed downward as the curvature of the planet rose ever higher in their sights, falling right into the maw of that great, blue sphere. In his head, he'd gone over the plan a hundred times- take out the anti-air installations at the edge of the main city so the main force can make its way to the base of the space elevator by frigate. The sprawling volcanic tunnel network of the planet thankfully didn't extend to the area of bedrock where his group would be fighting- closer more to the massive mountain ridge buttressing the city on the other end- along with more of the military installations. One hundred soldiers, with another hundred in reserve on the _TSF Gauntlet of Might_ and the _TSF Gauntlet of Power_ , plus the supporting fighter squadron, should be more than enough, he convinced himself.

As the shuttle fell ever further into the aliens' world, the arc of the horizon lessened with every kilometer. Plumes of red began careening over the kinetic barrier and into the cockpit from the heat of the entry, with the barrier's twinkles of blue mixing in. Saren always found it to be a calming sight.

His helmet chirped to life. "Seventh spear," the mission controller began, "be advised, gravity is point eight eight six Palaven standard. Atmosphere pressure and composition is similar to Palaven and should be safe to breathe, barring allergens. Keep yourself suited just in case. Mission objective is crowded with aliens, assumed to be hostile elements. We count just shy of seventy. We'll push an updated map of the defensive installation to you as soon as we are able. Stay safe out there."

The flames licking at the barriers were dissipating; they were close to the surface now. Saren reflexively nodded. "Thank you, mission control. Keep us up to date." He opened his comm network to his hundred soldiers. "Soldiers of the seventh spear, we are going up against an unknown enemy- an unknown enemy that our intelligence believes does not use the mass effect. Expect the unexpected, but remember your training. The Hierarchy has forged you to be the finest, most precise, most deadly instruments of war in the galaxy, and we will repay their generosity by crushing all that we come across." The craft levelled off atop an ocean with a beach in the distance, and blue-leafed trees behind it. "Is that understood, soldiers?"

The soldiers shouted an affirmation in unison. "Yes sir!" The shuttle responded with a surge in acceleration.

"Excellent."

The two pilots looked at the radar display. One pointed at it as the beach inched ever closer. "We're getting some radar pings in the distance. Inbound enemy aircraft one hundred twenty kilometers away. They'll be on us in less than a minute. Brace for evasive maneu-"

A red light exploded from the front as a wave of pressure slammed into Saren's chest, caving it in. Everything went black.

* * *

 **Commander Zaeed Massani  
** **Nova Beideihe Province, UEG Shanxi,** Shanxi System  
 **UNSC Military Calendar: February 4, 2561**

Shanxi's blue sun was just beginning to crest its way over the horizon of the Nova Beideihe Bay as a beam of light cut through the early dawn.

"Did you fuckin' see that!?" Zaeed turned to his left, to his spec-ops partner for a half-dozen-plus years now, as he lowered the massive green weapon sitting on his shoulder. "Boom! Right through the fuckin' cockpit!"

Lieutenant Vido Santiago followed the descending brown and red dropship into the forest canopy with his head, smoke and flames billowing out of the 25-credit-sized hole, a smile visibly widening across his face through his helmet the lower the vessel flew. "Not a bad shot, old man."

The other alien vessels responded in kind by veering wildly in an evasive pattern.

"Not a bad shot?" Zaeed stared at Vido with an incredulous look, "that was fucking perfect! Fuckin' art is what it was!" He looked up at the smoke in the sky and then to his five-man fireteam and the warthogs behind them. "Right, let's move, ladies, grab your shit! ONI's not paying us for a beach vacation; let's kidnap some aliens!"

The M12 Force Application Vehicle, commonly (and affectionately) known as the Warthog, was the most ubiquitous ground vehicle in the UNSC arsenal by a factor of three. Four nigh-indestructible wheels composed of carbon nanotubes, layers of specially strengthened titanium-A and ballistic polycarbonate for a chassis, and a hydrogen engine as solid as bedrock formed the basis of the pickup truck-esque vehicle with a seemingly infinite number of derivatives. Zaeed and his team rode into the provincial bay on two such variants: an M12 Light Reconnaissance Vehicle, a regular warthog with an M46 "Vulcan" Light Anti-Aircraft Gun, a triple-barreled monster of a cannon, and an M12-831 Troop Transport, the pickup truck section replaced with seating for four and a small blood tray for wounded to lay on. Considering the terrain, both had the M686 Tropical modifications- extra ride height, tougher suspension, additional corrosion-resistant coating, and a different camouflage pattern to better blend into the jungle backdrop.

"Horsham, Decker, get back in that transport. My 'hog'll get point. Zee, you're on the LAAG," he pointed to the second Warthog's massive bed-mounted gun, "Vido, you're my shotgun."

A chorus of acknowledgements rang out as Zaeed made his way to the driver's seat of his large, heavy vehicle. Zaeed's left food stood on the climb-bars, and he lifted his right foot into the cockpit. His left hand grabbed a pull-handle and his right pulled him into his seat. Above, he heard the telltale whistling of UNSC Broadsword air superiority fighters meeting the remaining alien dropships.

After dropping the cumbersome M6 G/GNR laser he used to blow up the alien dropship into a tray behind the driver's seat and his beloved assault rifle into his lap, Zaeed briefly re-familiarized himself with the controls: steering wheel, a half-dozen useless dials, way too many warning lights, transfer-case, gas and brake pedal under the right foot, and e-brake just near his right hand. He looked forward, picturing a long, winding road through the hundred-meter tall Shanxi Red Palms that dominated the landscape in these equatorial regions. Life was pretty good.

He pushed the engine start button as twelve liters of pure power rumbled to life. The commander's left hand flicked a switch to "four wheel drive" on the transfer case controls and slammed on the gas pedal. Each of the four tires spun furiously before their carbon compound found purchase in the soft loam of the bay's soil and the vehicle rocketed off into the jungle.

A shit-eating grin made its way across the Commander's face. "God damn I fuckin' love a good 'hog," he mentioned to the universe. "Vido, get me a path to the crashed ship," Zaeed ordered as his chariot careened into the air off of the massive roots of the thirty story tall trees.

The vehicle landed, jerking Vido's head forward. He recomposed himself and gave an affirmative "Yes sir!" as the jungle whizzed by. Not twenty seconds later, a waypoint appeared on everyone's helmets. "Mission control sent the waypoint to the HUD. Eee-tee-aay is about five minutes, sir."

"I'll get there in three," Zaeed challenged, reading over the helmet's heads-up-display's directions as he pressed his foot deeper into the gas pedal. A screen in the center console showed Horsham's troop transport keeping up through the rear-facing camera as the pair of vehicles raced through the jungle undergrowth at eighty kilometers per hour.

The bushes on the ground of Shanxi's tropics were, mercifully, nothing the 'hogs couldn't handle. The gargantuan trees and their massive canopies blotted out most of the sun at the floor, preventing larger foliage from ever growing, and kept the ground shaded and cool. Zaeed depolarized his helmet with his left hand as he veered hard with his right.

Bushes and thick tree trunks whizzed by as massive, alien mosquitos met grizzly fates across the front of the pair of speeding vehicles. "Should see it in a few, Commander," the Lieutenant pointed out, as a billowing plume of smoke made its way into view through a series of broken tree tops. "There it is," pointed Vido.

Zaeed slowed his convoy slowed down to reasonable speeds before barking an order- "weapons ready, kids." Affirmative green dots appeared in his visor next to each of his squad members.

The convoy rounded a massive Shanxi Devil's Tongue to a scene of devastation. The alien dropship had seemingly lost altitude control and head-first into a series of tree-tops. At first, the shuttle won, until it didn't, got partially stuck on tree, flipped over, and slid roof-first into the jungle floor.

"Oof," Decker vocalized.

The shuttle itself could best be described as a flying brick. It was wide- much wider than it was tall- and long- maybe 20 or 30 meters. The front was smaller than the engine-packed rear and was entirely angular. Sloped side-walls looked like they were meant for fending off tank shells. Between the various triangularly shaped panels, a glowing red light next to a square panel shone through.

The Warthogs stopped ten meters from the downed ship. "That light's probably for the door," Zaeed pointed out. "Decker, grab your shotgun, you're point," ordered the Zaeed as he began stepping down. "We'll throw frags in the back and pick up any survivors."

"Sir?"

The commander landed with an unsatisfying squish in the soft mud. "We only need a couple of 'em alive, kid." He slung his rifle over his right shoulder and detached a pair of fragmentation grenades as he began tearing his boots from the ground and moving them over to the downed shuttle. "Besides, ONI claims they're tough sons of bitches. Just checkin' their intel."

Decker joined his commander in the loam, gave an affirmative "yes sir," and began checking his shotgun.

Massani made his way to the overturned shuttle's door panel. "Looks like there's a lever," he noted before forming up on that side of the door, his own shotgun in-hand, Decker on the other. The commander stared at his call for a moment. "Ready, kid?" He nodded. "Good. Vido, Horsham, you're on fire support. Zee, stay on that LAAG. Anything we're not dragging out better be dead." Green lights appeared on the commander's HUD. "Good. Pulling the lever."

Zaeed's large hands crammed into the small handle and pushed downwards, hard. The red light started flashing, at first slowly, then faster, as a beeping synchronized itself to the flashing. "Stand back a bit," he ordered, raising his shotgun. The sound reached a high-pitched whine as a pair of explosions rocked the top of the dirt-brown door panel, then two more at a hinge below, and then a final two below those. A pair of thin panels fell away, revealing a sea of heads strapped in upside down and broken, ribbed ceiling joints, light fixtures, and overhead storage.

Commander Massani wasted no time. He and his care pulled a fragmentation grenade from their chests, then lobbed them in the aft-end of the ship. One, two, and a pair of explosions rocked the vessel. Time slowed as the adrenaline kicked in. Zaeed began raised his shotgun while motioning to Decker with his helmet.

The kid went inside, flashlight on, followed by Zaeed. In the aft, blue blood, fragments of metal, and chunks of fleshy bits caked the walls around the pair of explosion sites. "Holy shit. Commander, I thought ONI said they all had shields?" Line upon line of alien creatures sat facing forward, what was left of most of their heads hanging like so many apples from a tree. Each, except for one half-torsoless corpse slouched at the back, was restrained in by straps.

"Office of Not Intelligent, kid," quipped the commander as he gripped his shotgun a little looser. "The ones up front might be alive."

Decker started moving over the alien on the far side as Zaeed turned to look at the cockpit. The small hole from his laser shot erupted in a spectacular explosion inside, engulfing the pilots and their control systems. Burnt liquids, broken buttons, and the outer-half of some bodies were all that remained of the front.

As Massani scanned the alien controls, the alien Decker was starting to cut down pulled its sidearm out. Even hanging upside down, there was no dodging at that range- three dull thumps highlighted with a bright blue light echoed through the cockpit and found purchase in Decker's chest.

Zaeed pulled his shotgun up and responded with five shots of his own. The first shell hit a brilliant blue barrier, but the second hit the alien's chest plate. The third and fourth hit flesh as the alien dropped its sidearm, arms hanging limply towards the roof. The commander ran to Decker and, with his left arm around the ODST's neck cuff, dragged the young soldier out of the alien shuttle.

Sunlight revealed three pinprick-sized holes passing right through the Decker's chestplate into three large lumps in the back, blood dribbling down his front. After safetying his shotgun and tossing it aside, Massani pulled Decker's biofoam canister off his side and jammed a nozzle into what was left of his armor. "Fuck, hang on kid." The hole atop his lung was first. "Vido," ordered the commander, "cut those two in the first row down and blow the rest of these fucks to hell," as white foam poured in. The next wound was attended to in an agonizingly slow six seconds later. "This is Lucky Strike Actual," Massani called out as the foam filled a second hole, "we have two packages," and moved onto the third, "and a wounded. Need an on-site extraction."

His radio crackled to life. "Lucky Strike, this is Hotbox, read you loud and clear. Bootsies and I are about sixty seconds away. Prep your 'hogs for retrieval."

Massani finished the final pour of biofoam as his charge began flailing. "Roger." Massani moved to quickly restrain him. "Decker, you're going to be fine. Depolarize." Zaeed's visor quickly turned transparent. "Decker, look at me. You're going to be fine. Just some shock."

"It hurts, sir," the younger soldier wheezed.

"Nothing the docs can't patch up." The commander looked up to see Horsham and Santiago dragging a pair of restrained aliens over to the Warthogs. "Don't forget to leave some grenades in there," the commander gestured to the downed craft before looking down. "Kid, stop moving. That's an order. You've got foam in you. You're fine."

The young soldier tried one last time to lift his head up. "My legs aren't moving, sir," he cried.

"Lay the fuck down, kid," Commander Massani pushed Decker's shoulders down into the ground, "or this foam'll get dislodged. Medics are almost here."

"Sir," came the faint acknowledgment.

Explosions rippled through the invaders' shuttle craft as a pile of fragmentation grenades explored the inside of the ship.

Behind Zaeed, the comforting hum of descending Pelican dropships could be heard. "Train has arrived, Lucky Strike," one pilot put into the radio.

"Roger," Zaeed craned his head around around and saw the familiar lines of his team's ticket back to ONI's TEMPLE base descending. The twin bubble canopy at the front left his view as it rotated during its descent on its four vertical thrusters. The side of the Pelican, besides demonstrating its girth, had a picture of a lit match atop a box and dozens of covenant faces- one for each completed mission. "Hotbox," Massani instinctively yelled over the roar of the Pelican's engines, "do you have a medic in back?" Finally, as the Pelican finished rotating, its cavernous backside opened up to reveal six empty seats, piles of supplies, and three marines- one with a red cross across her arm standing, right arm holding onto a grip.

"Sure do, Lucky Strike. Bring your wounded onboard."

Commander Massani turned back to Sergeant Decker. "Almost home safe, kid." The commander grabbed hold of Decker's shoulder straps again. "Ready?"

"Ready," the Sergeant wheezed. It was another brisk thirty meters to the back of the Pelican. By the time the pair made it over, the medic was waiting to help move the wounded soldier in the back. The commander and medic pulled Decker up to the wide, flat floor of the floating dropship.

Inside, active noise cancellation kept engine noise down to a whisper. "Thanks, sarge'," Zaeed nodded to the medic as he turned around to see Vido walking towards him.

"Forgot this," the Lieutenant motioned to the spare shotgun in his hand before tossing it up to Zaeed.

"Never leave home without it." He reflexively clamped the gun to his backside. "Packages are on the other Pelican?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Bring the 'hogs 'round. Let's get out of this swamp hole and back to base. Job well done." Zaeed turned back to the First Sergeant and another soldier leaning over the injured Decker, his helmet now removed, eyes closed, and small trail of blood trickling down his mouth. "How is he, 'doc?"

The medic put down her scanner and looked up. "His lungs and digestive system are all kinds of fucked up, but his heart is fine. Two shattered ribs up front, tee-seven and eight shattered in back. Bullet fragments all over the place. If we can get him to a flash-cloner soon, he'll be fine." She turned to the soldier behind her. "Carroll! Pull those breathing tubes down!"

Zaeed gave one last glance at a now-unconscious Decker before jumping down to a now-docked Warthog, then to the ground, quickly walking over the other Pelican, and climbing aboard into the seat on the right closest to the rear door, trusty battle rifle in hand. His remaining team was strapped in along with three bird aliens and a warthog in the back. "Lucky Strike Actual, we're all clear for launch here."

"Roger Lucky Strike, Bootsies is green."

"Hotbox is green and taking off."

Commander Zaeed Massani finally took a good look at his foe as his ship started lifting off. Their armor was a utilitarian gray with red lights, some flickering where shrapnel impacted. It was shockingly reminiscent of Covenant armor. The creatures had three fingers on each arm, thankfully handcuffed to hardlight mounts, two toes on each bird leg, and curiously-thin torsos. Their helmets were polarized save for the one in the center where the grenade caved in its chest. What was revealed was an alien as ugly as any jackal. Its face was a cornucopia of mandibles with sharp, carnivorous teeth and deep-set eyes. He announced his conclusions to his team, "ugliest chicken I've ever seen," and was rewarded with a few chuckles.

Horsham followed up with the obvious question eating at the rest of the team. "How's Decker?".

"Nothin' the docs at base can't patch up," Zaeed comforted. "He'll be back to getting shot at alongside us in no time."

He took a deep breath before turning to look out of the Pelican's rear, past the attached Warthog, and down onto the alien dropship and the shattered jungle around it. A fire was now raging inside of the vessel, smoke pouring out of the craft. Zaeed instinctively cradled his time-tested BR85-HB service rifle as the flames below mesmerized him. His dropship rose and rose as the alien vessel became ever more obscured until only a colonnade of dark gray smoke was visible.

Zee elbowed Massani, knocking the Commander out of his stupor. "First contact, huh sir," he asked with a quiver of fear.

Zaeed looked back at the aliens on anchored to the blood tray of his Pelican. "You see that right there, Corporal?" His right arm pulled his battle rifle closer as he pointed with his left at the creature with the savaged chestplate. "These bird-brained sons of bitches chose the wrong fuckin' species to fuck with. Remember that."

"Ooh-rah!"

The Commander responded with an "ooh-rah" of his own. Casualties from the first battle of Harvest were wildly one-sided. _'Maybe we'll get lucky,'_ Massani sarcastically thought. His own derisive snort and a half-hearted smirk were his joke's only acknowledgments. He looked back out as the Pelican accelerated away from the landing zone, the reds and blues from Shanxi's equatorial jungle canopy whizzing by faster and faster.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

We're back! Thanks for both the kind words and constructive criticism. This was my first time ever writing ground combat so it was a little tougher than I thought it'd be. As always, constructive criticism is welcome. Unfortunately, I don't have a proofreader but I'm hoping nothing too egregious slipped past.

There's a niche but growing field that sits at the cross-section of physics, astrophysics, chemistry, and biology called Astrobiology. From "The Astrobiology Primer" by Domgall-Goldman, Wright, et al, "Astrobiology is the science that seeks to understand the story of life in our universe. Astrobiology includes investigation of the conditions that are necessary for life to emerge and flourish, the origin of life, the ways that life has evolved and adapted to the wide range of environmental conditions here on Earth, the search for life beyond Earth, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and consideration of the future of life here on Earth and elsewhere." With our first example of an alien invasion (Turians) happening on an alien planet (Shanxi) populated by other alien lifeforms (Humans, human-affiliates), this seems like the perfect author's note to introduce the field.

Astute readers may have noticed mention of Shanxi's large, blue sun and the indigenous Red Palm. Hypothetically, how would plant life react- evolutionarily- to orbiting a star with wildly different characteristics from our home sun? What evolutionary traits would it pick up? Would Chlorophyll be the dominant mechanism for producing energy or would some other, as-of-yet undiscovered compound dominate?

Most of the inspiration came from NASA JPL's travel posters (they're beautiful), specifically the Kepler 186f one. Kepler 186f is the first potentially habitable, i.e. earth-like, world ever found (see: An Earth-sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Cool Star by Quintana et al; arxiv 1404.5667). Kepler 186f, specifically, orbits a red dwarf- a very cool, stable star with low luminosity.

For those interested in learning more, I would recommend The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (doi: 10.1089/ast.2015.1460) as a starting point. It's an online summary of the field and an excellent primer to dive into further work but written by scientists with citations for non-scientists.

* * *

 **Responses to questions:  
** Some of the reviews have pointed out that the story is going in a similar path to other stories. Let's be honest with ourselves here: if we didn't want something derivative, we wouldn't be reading fanfiction. We're interested in a comfortable, light read with familiar and safe characters in a setting we didn't want to have to think about too much- and that's okay! Don't worry; there are twists and the foreshadowing has already started happening.

\- Prometheus-G747: _"Seriously. You have gotta check out the book saga starting with 'The Lost Fleet: Dauntless.'"_ Thanks for the recommendation! Read them all upon your suggestion and it was exactly what I was looking for.

\- jawswhite7: _"[Halo Warfleet recommendation; references to Halo warship specific impulse]."_ Thanks! Picked it up and it was indeed super-useful! Unfortunately, I've written what I've written and I don't think my ship speeds quite line up with cannon, but it's within an order of magnitude.

\- Danen5: _"Have you been to Kiribati, in particular Aranuka? Also, did you also take English lit?"_ I have never been there, but I try to do a lot of research before I start typing a story so that it's as believable as possible. That you're asking means I'm doing a good job. For example, Aranuka was mentioned as the site of an orbital space elevator in Legacy of Onyx and was the closest location to Sydney, Australia, so it seemed like a logical place to go up (traveling in-atmosphere is much more slow and costly than the frictionless vacuum of space). I checked out the Kiribati's tourism scene, Google Maps, and prior censuses for population levels of various islands under Kiribati's purview, though all of that content was cut in a later revision. On a related note, I also now want to go on vacation there. As for english lit, I've never taken a serious formal writing course and this is the only thing I've ever published online, though I read a good amount.


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